Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) has decided to go ahead with the Central India Pipeline project if Reliance Petroleum Ltd (RPL) - a partner in the project - pulls out and pursues its own parallel pipeline project.

The Central India Pipeline project is promoted by IOC, RPL, Essar Oil and Bharat Petroleum. The project envisages a 1,700 km pipeline traversing from Jamnagar (Gujarat) to Ratlam (Madhya Pradesh) via Rajkot (Gujarat). From Ratlam, one section would branch out to Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh) while another would branch to Nagpur (Maharashtra). This pipeline will carry petroleum products from IOC’s and RPL’s refineries in Gujarat to major consumption centres in north and central India.

Reliance’s recently proposed Jamnagar-Cuttack gas pipeline will run from Jamnagar to Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Ujjain (Madhya Pradesh) and terminate at Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh). Later it would be extended from Bhopal to Cuttack (Orissa). This pipeline proposes to connect Reliance’s proposed LNG import terminal at Jamnagar to its NEC-25 offshore exploration block at Cuttack.

It may be noted that the starting point of both pipelines is the same. Besides, both pipelines will traverse from Gujarat to Madhya Pradesh.