Rail's share of petro transport slipping

With the increase in petroleum pipeline network, the railways have lost their first position in transportation of petro products. It now has the third biggest market share in transporting these, after the coastal mode and pipelines. The fourth spot is occupied by road transport.

While the railways have been losing market share, the volume they carry has remained flat. Pipelines moved up from the fourth spot to the second in 2010-11. “There has been growth in line share and simultaneous decrease in railways’ share in transportation, mainly on account of increased utilisation of pipelines network across the country,” said an official at the Petroleum Products Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC), a wing of the petroleum ministry.

According to Indian Railways, they carried 23.7 million tonnes of petroleum oil lubricants in April-October, a negligible change over last year’s corresponding volume of 23.2 mt. This is happening even as the volume of total goods carried by the railways increased nearly four per cent to 537 mt in the same period of the year. According to Shri Prakash, a former member (traffic) of the Railway Board, safety and cost are two critical aspects in transportation of petro products, and pipeline transportation is safer than both rail and road. “Therefore, companies have expanded the pipeline network,” he said.

All the three public sector oil marketing companies — Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum — have seen a drop in products transported through the railways. According to PPAC data, the railways’ share came down to 26.79 billion tonne kilometres (BTKM) in 2010-11 from 31.90 BTKM in 2009-10. HPCL’s Mundra-Delhi Pipeline, which transported 3.3 mt of products in 2009-10, transported five mt in 2010-11.

This increased its BTKM from 7.3 to 7.9. Extension of BPCL’s MMPL (Mumbai-Manmad-Mangalia) pipeline extension up to Delhi (Bijwasan) took away another 2.86 BTKM from other modes, particularly rail.

More pipe contracts have been awarded and are being constructed, which would further take away the share of rail and other modes.