Cairn wins PetroFed award for O&G Pipeline Transportation Company of the Year

Cairn India, country’s leading and Asia’s fastest growing upstream Oil and Gas Company, was won the PetroFed Award for O&G Pipeline Transportation Company of the year, on 8 June. At glittering ceremony in Delhi, the Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Jaipal Reddy presented the award to Cairn India Ltd. CEO Rahul Dhir

The award recognises the performance excellence of Mangala Development Pipeline Project (MDPP), a joint venture with ONGC, which is emerging to be a key lifeline for the energy security of the country. The project is of great national importance, contributing 20% of India’s domestic crude basket. The world’s longest (670 kms) continuously heated and insulated pipeline has been designed to deliver the land-locked Rajasthan crude to 75% refining capacity in India.

MDP is the first pipeline with such a wide access, crossing all major crude carrier lines in Western India and thus, offering potential to blend Rajasthan crude into them. As on May 2012 more than 85 million barrels of crude from Barmer has been sold through this pipeline to Indian refiners. As per the last quarter announcement, the crude oil sold through this pipeline has helped in reducing the national oil import by USD 6 billion and have also contributed USD 2.4 billion to the national exchequer.

Barmer to Salaya pipeline section (590 km) is currently operational, and it is being further extended to Salaya to Bhogat (80 km) and the marine facility at Bhogat, that would ensure crude supply to coastal refiners as well. The current operational section of the pipeline comprises of a 24” insulated crude oil pipeline, which uses Skin Effect Heat Management System (SEHMS) to keep the crude above its Wax Appearance Temperature (WAT) of 65oC. A parallel 8” gas line feeds fuel to 36 Above Ground Installations, located every 18 kms, to keep the pipeline at the required temperature. In addition, there is a captive power plant, two storage terminals and intermediate pumping /pigging stations to provide multiple sales off-take points and ensure long term integrity.

MDPP was commissioned on 13 May, 2010 and production was quickly ramped up-to 125,000 bopd. Since then it has completed commercial sales of 65 MM-BBLS, to IOCL and private refiners. This phase of the MDPP project was completed within 18 months with the consent and cooperation, ensuring minimum disruption to the 40,000 land owners across eight districts of Rajasthan and Gujarat. Despite being a highly complex system, MDPP has been recognised as one of the lowest cost operators. It has a high operational efficiency, with a downtime of less than 2% and capacity utilisation rate of 83%, while achieving best in class HSE performance. To sustain its competitive advantage, Cairn has developed a world class operational set-up, supported by an integrated HSE and security system that uses cutting edge technologies, including multi-layered communication network and satellite based activity monitoring system.

The MDPP Infrastructure is a global engineering achievement and is being operated in a safe and efficient manner, making it an asset of strategic importance towards achieving the energy security of India.