Guwahati: The 130-kilometer-long Indo-Bangla Friendship Pipeline (IBFPL), which would transport fuel from Bangladesh to Assam’s Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL), is expected to launch on March 18.
The project will provide fuel to Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC)’s Parbatipur depot from NRL’s marketing terminal in Siliguri, West Bengal.
The 130 km long pipeline will be originally inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his colleague from Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina.
The project was conducted for a total cost of Rs 377.08 crore, of which NRL donated Rs 91.84 crore for the construction of the pipeline on the Indian side, while the Indian government is providing the rest Rs 285.24 crore as a grant-in-aid for the Bangladesh section.
The 130-kilometer pipeline will have a yearly capacity of 1 million metric tonnes.
According to the Dhaka-Delhi agreement, in the initial phase, fuel oil would be transferred to Bangladesh through a pipeline for a period of 15 years; however, the countries could agree to prolong the time.
According to an official, the project’s mechanical work was completed on December 12 of last year.
Earlier, Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal stated that the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways has a pipeline of 44 projects for total investment of Rs. 22,900 crore till 2024-25.
Moreover, the government is working on the guidelines for dealing with stressed public-private partnership (PPP) projects at major ports and has also come up with policies to support the shipbuilding industry in India, Sonowal said.
The Ports, Shipping and Waterways minister further said that under the National Monetization Pipeline (NMP), MoPSW has accorded approval to 22 projects worth Rs 12,222 crore. Out of the 22 projects, seven projects worth Rs 5,278 crore have already been awarded on PPP mode, rest projects are in various stages of bidding, he added.