4 layers of sanitisation for LPG cylinders, enough stock to meet demand: BPCL

Ghaziabad (Uttar Pradesh) [India], Mar 30 (ANI): There is enough stock of cooking liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and there is no need to worry, said Pawan Kumar, Head, LPG division of BPCL, Northern Region, on Monday.

ANI team visited one of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited's (BPCL) LPG bottling plants situated at Loni, Ghaziabad district in Uttar Pradesh, which caters to the LPG needs of 14 districts of western UP.

According to Kumar, Loni's bottling plant caters to the cooking gas needs of 30 lakh customers. Daily 225 trucks deliver 75,000 to 80,000 LPG cylinders. This plant also has around 7 lakh Ujjawala scheme holders.

The northern region includes states like Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Union Territory Jammu and Kashmir and the national capital region of Delhi.

Kumar said: "Due to COVID-19, we are sanitising each and every LPG cylinder of our plant. Four layers of sanitisation of LPG cylinders has been made mandatory for all the bottling plant of the country and for all the companies. Trucks carrying empty LPG cylinders are showered with sodium hypochlorite with the sprinklers stalled at the entry gate."

"At the entry gate, there are loudspeakers, which are continuously announcing about how to contain corona. Once truck reaches the unloading fingers, empty cylinders are unloaded. After unloading the empty cylinders, these are being sent to the cylinder washing unit where they are washed through high-pressure pumps using sodium hypochlorite and then these are sent to the carousel unit for a refill," added Kumar.

"Carousel unit refills 72s cylinders in one minute at a time. 4,500 cylinders are refilled in an hour and a total of 85,000 cylinders are refilled in a day. After refilling, cylinders are again sent for sanitisation and then loaded to the truck and again at the exit gate loaded truck is sanitised through sprinklers. Finally, these are sent for delivery to the distributors," he said.

Kumar said the sodium hypochlorite sprinklers at entry and exit gate are stalled after the outburst of COVID-19. This measure has been taken to ensure the safety of households from the coronavirus.

Kumar also clarified that oil marketing companies have enough stock to supply and the shortage of LPG gas is totally a rumour. "We have enough stock. People need not worry about LPG," he said.