India’s longest cross-country pipeline opens

India’s 1,054-kilometer oil product pipeline, which runs from Mundra in the northwest to Delhi in the east, was inaugurated on February 3 in a ceremony led by National Congress President Sonia Gandhi. The pipeline, said to be the country’s longest, was built in just 36 months at a cost of Rs17.57 billion (US$358.95 million) by state-run Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd. (HPCL). The pipeline, with a capacity of five million tons per year, will transport Euro 2 and 3 petrol, diesel fuel and kerosene. The second phase of HPCL’s pipe-construction project calls for the pipeline’s capacity to be expanded to six million tons. (February 3, 2009)