Indo-Bangla Friendship Pipeline (IBFPL), the 130 kilometer long pipeline project to carry fuel from Assam’s Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) to Bangladesh is likely to be inaugurated on March 18.

The project will deliver fuel from NRL’s marketing terminal in West Bengal’s Siliguri to Parbatipur depot on Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC).

The ambitious 130-km long pipeline project will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina.

The project was undertaken at a total cost of Rs 377.08 crore of which NRL financed Rs 91.84 crore for the construction of the pipeline on the Indian side, while the remaining Rs 285.24 crore for the Bangladesh portion is being funded by the Indian government as a grant-in-aid.

The capacity of the 130-kilometre pipeline will be one million metric tonnes per annum.

According to the Dhaka-Delhi agreement, fuel oil would be transported to Bangladesh for 15 years through the pipeline in the first phase and the term would be extended on the consensus of the countries.

The mechanical works of the project was completed on December 12 last year, said an official.

Earlier, Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal stated that the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways has a pipeline of 44 projects for total investment of Rs. 22,900 crore till 2024-25.

Moreover, the government is working on the guidelines for dealing with stressed public-private partnership (PPP) projects at major ports and has also come up with policies to support the shipbuilding industry in India, Sonowal said.

The Ports, Shipping and Waterways minister further said that under the National Monetization Pipeline (NMP), MoPSW has accorded approval to 22 projects worth Rs 12,222 crore. Out of the 22 projects, seven projects worth Rs 5,278 crore have already been awarded on PPP mode, rest projects are in various stages of bidding, he added.