Panipat oxygen plant’s per day production reaches over 270 MT

KARNAL: Faced with unprecedented demand of medical liquid oxygen, hundreds of workers at the oxygen plant of the Indian Oil Corporation’s Panipat refinery are working tirelessly to ensure that the lifesaving oxygen reaches hospitals.

With efforts of the officials, the plant is running round-theclock and stretching itself to meet the sky-rocketing demand of medical oxygen from thousands of hospitals across country, especially Delhi.

As per officials, the plant has crossed it’s per day production capacity of 240MT and now producing 270 MT medical oxygen.

Of this, 80 MT is being supplied to Haryana, 20 MT to Punjab and the rest is left for Delhi.

“Soon after the second wave of Covid hit the country last month, there was a huge pressure to meet the demand of liquid medical oxygen in multiple states, we have never faced such a situation but are working hard to ensure that no patient dies due to lack of oxygen,” said a senior official of the refinery.

He said in the face of a massive surge in demand for medical oxygen, Indian Oil has diverted high-purity oxygen used in its mono ethylene glycol unit to produce medicalgrade liquid oxygen at the Panipat refinery.

K John Prasad, chief general manager (corporate Communications) IOC, said that the throughput of the unit has been scaled down to serve the more critical cause and the Indian Oil is converting 14 LNG tankers of 17 MT each into medical grade oxygen carriers to strengthen the medical oxygen logistics in country.

“By next week, over 20 road tankers and 25 ISO containers of about 820 MT combined capacity will be pressed into action by the corporation,” he said, adding that over the next six months, they will manufacture 10 cryogenic road tankers at heir cryogenic plant in Nasik.

To further streamline the medical oxygen supply scenario, they have launched a single-window app, Sanjeevani Express, to enable real-time monitoring of liquid oxygen supply.

On whether the supply will be increased as a 500-bed Covid hospital is being set up near the plant, he said, “We are producing as per capacity and since the hospital is being set up in Haryana it will have oxygen supply from Haryana’s allocation.”

Will manufacture 10 cryogenic road tankers at our Nashik plant in next 6 months.

K JOHN PRASAD, CGM, IOC