Midstream Business

OIL's 1247 Km fully automated trunk pipeline with a capacity of 9.65 MMTPA, which transports the combined crude oil production of OIL and ONGCL in North-East to the refineries in this region and imported crude from Barauni to Bongaigaon Refinery (delivered from ex Haldia port through IOCL pipeline), has become a lifeline of national importance. Commissioned in 1962, the crude oil pipeline traverses 78 river crossings through the states of Assam, West Bengal and Bihar. The network of 11 pumping stations and 17 repeater stations is a specimen of exemplary maintenance work by OIL personnel. OIL has the distinction of running the crude oil fuelled prime mover engines & the pumps in its originally established Pump Stations for over 200,000 hours.

The 600 KM pipeline segment between Bongaigaon and Barauni was re-engineered to enable oil flow in either direction and is now transporting Imported crude from Barauni to Bongaigaon.

During 2012-21, the Company executed major projects to replace all vintage equipments such as pumps, its prime movers along with all related auxiliaries in order to upgrade and optimize the Naharkatiya-Barauni pipeline system and meet present safety standards. Phase-I of the project was completed in November’2017 and Phase-II has been completed in December’2021. New pump stations with state-of-the-art facilities are in operation and reliably delivering crude oil to all North-East Refineries. During the period from 2017 - 2022, around 590 km of pipeline rehabilitation was carried out under Pipeline Rehab Project, Phase -I.

Supervisory Control & Data Acquisition (SCADA) system to constantly monitor movement of crude oil through the pipeline is in use since its very inception. The trunk communication system uses Optical Fibre Cable technology for voice and data communication. OIL has also leased some of the spare dark fibre and bandwidth to other companies, generating revenue from the same.

In Petroleum Product Pipeline portfolio, OIL commissioned 654 km long, 1.72 MMTPA capacity Numaligarh - Siliguri multi-product pipeline (NSPL) during 2008-09. This product pipeline is continuously evacuating refined products from Numaligarh Refinery to the markets in other states. The Company is presently executing a project to augment its transportation capacity to 5.5 MMTPA for evacuating additional products from NRL’s ongoing project for refinery expansion from 3 to 9 MMTPA.

The Duliajan - Numaligarh Gas Pipeline (DNPL) where OIL has 23% equity stake has also been operating since 2010. This line feeds natural gas to Numaligarh Refinery for their captive use and, in future may transport gas beyond Numaligarh to other cities in Assam. OIL thus has the distinct experience of operating and maintaining pipelines to transport hydrocarbon like crude oil, natural gas and petroleum products.