Govt to utilise unused railway corridor

SANGAM PRASAIN
KATHMANDU, MAR 18 -

Following the latest agreement with the Indian Oil Corporation to jointly construct the cross-border oil pipeline, the government is considering adopting less-costly approaches for acquiring land for the project.

The government is planning to use its land, which was earlier allocated to a railway corridor, for the Raxual-Amlekhgunj pipeline project. The railway corridor links Amlekhgunj with India’s Raxual via Birgunj. The corridor has so far remained unused.

Nepal Railway owns 400 bighas of land in Birgunj, Amlekhgunj, Raxual, Janakpur, according to Nepal Railway.

“As acquiring land from the public is problematic and costly, we are considering to the use the land allocated for railway,” said Purushottam Ojha, secretary of the Ministry of Commerce and Supplies.

However, the government is unaware about the condition the land and it plans to identify the real status of land soon. The government hopes that it will have to acquire little land from the public for the project if the railway corridor is used for the pipeline project. Of the 41 km pipeline, 39 kilometers lies on the Nepali side of border and the rest falls in India.

The two sides have agreed in principle that Nepal will bear the cost of the pipeline to be built in its territory and India will bear the cost of the project falling in its side.

During the bilateral talks between the Nepal Oil Corporation and Indian Oil Corporation in Mumbai on March 2, the two sides had agreed to form a joint committee to carry out works related to tender calling and procurement of construction materials for the project.

During the talks, the two sides had agreed to implement the project under separate ownership-joint operation model, dropping the previous idea of a joint venture.

The pipeline is expected to reduce transportation cost by 40-50 percent, control leakage and ensure hassle-free transfer and quality of petroleum products.

As per the detailed project report (DPR) compiled by the IOC, the NOC should lay down the pipeline 1.5 meters below the ground. For this, the DPR says NOC will not have to purchase land from individual land owners, but has to take the ‘right of way’ permission. However, owners should be compensated for the use of their land.

Land owners should be restricted from constructing permanent constructions within five meters on the either side of the pipeline alignment. They however, can till their land. However, as the government is planning to use its own land, it should not face many hassles in laying down the pipeline.

“We are not sure when the project will start,” said Secretary Ojha. He, however, said the project will be completed within one year of the beginning of construction work. The estimated cost of the project stands at Rs 1.6 billion, as per a survey carried out of by the IOC.

The IOC had first proposed the cross-border pipeline project in 1995. Following IOC’s proposal, the first MoU for the project was signed between NOC and IOC on September 1996 at junior executive level. In 2004 another agreement was reached at chief executive level.