Kathmandu, Sept 10 : The much awaited interstate petroleum pipeline project has been inaugurated today. Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi jointly inaugurated the project from the respective countries.    

A programme was organized at Singh Durbar for the PM Oli and at Hyderabad House for Indian PM Modi to switch on the project together as the inauguration via the video conference. With the inauguration, petroleum product has arrived in Amlekhgunj, Nepal from India's Motihari. The pipeline is the first cross border project in South Asia.    

For the first phase, diesel is brought and petrol and kerosene later. The Amlekhgunj-Motihari stretch is 69.2 km long.    

The pipeline supplies nearly 4,000 kl petroleum product every day, the project said. With the cross border project in place, more than Rs 2 billion is saved which was earlier spent on it transportation.  

  
Similarly, as the import cost declined, the price of the petroleum products has been slashed by Nepal Oil Corporation. The NOC cut the price of diesel, petrol and kerosene by Rs 2 per litre. Of the total diesel consumed in the country, 70 percent is supplied from Amlekhgunj.    

A high level technical team including NOC Executive Director is at Amlekhgung in course of the project inauguration. The NOC and Indian Oil Corporation had agreed in 2004 to construct the interstate pipeline project. It was however stalled for a decade on various reasons.    

In August 2015, then Minister for Commerce and Supply, Sunil Bahadur Thapa, and his Indian counterpart Dharmendra Pradhan had signed for the construction of the project. Both Nepal and India had special interest on completion of the project.    

Similarly, PM Oli and the Indian PM Modi had jointly laid the foundation stone to the pipeline in New Delhi during Oli's visit to India.    
The project cost is 2.75 billion Indian currencies.    

The programme organized to inaugurate the project at Singha Durbar was attended by Cabinet members, secretaries of various ministries and high level officials of the government.  (RSS)