The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF) has given clearance to the proposal of debottlenecking of the Salaya Mathura Pipeline (SMPL) of IOCL on 24 February 2016.

The cost of the project is Rs 1,584 crore. The total forest area involved in the project is 5.03 hectare and thus required Environment Ministry’s nod. The pipeline alignment is within 10 km range of two wildlife sanctuaries namely Jessore Sloth Bear Sanctuary (2.7 km) and Balaram- Ambaji Wildlife Sanctuary in Banaskantha district, Gujarat (0.09 km).

SMPL will augment the existing crude oil supply chain by laying a new underground pipeline orginating from Moda, Gujarat and will terminate at Manipuria (Dausa district) after traversing through Rajasthan. Further an additional pipeline will be laid in Rewari district of Haryana.

Out of the total pipeline length of approx 798 km, 287 km of pipeline will be laid in gujarat, 498 km will be laid in Rajasthan and 13 km in Hrayana. The crude supple from this pipeline will be fed to IOCL’s three inland refineries in Koyali (Gujarat), Mathura (Uttar Pradesh) and Panipat (Haryana) to meet their increased capacities.

In order to cater to the peak processing crude oil requirement of Mathura, Panipat and Koyali refineries in the short term, it was proposed to debottle the capacity of Salaya-Viramgam section from 21 metric million tonne per annum to 25 metric million tonne per annum, Viramgam-Koyali section from 8.5 metric million tonne per annum to 9 metric million tonne per annum, Viramgam-Chaksu section from 13.5 metric million tonne per annum to 16.5 metric million tonne per annum, Chaksu-Mathura section from 7.5 metric million tonne per annum to 9.2 metric million tonne per annum and Chaksu-Panipat section from 6 metric million tonne per annum to 7.3 metric million tonne per annum.