The second wave of the pandemic in India has led to an unprecedented strain on the healthcare sector, leading to the loss of innumerable lives. One of the major reasons that led to the breakdown of healthcare was the shortage of oxygen in hospitals. In a bid to support hospitals and increase the inflow of oxygen, oil marketing companies, such as Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation and Reliance Industries have pitched in by diverting high purity oxygen to hospitals. This move follows the government’s decision to prohibit the supply of oxygen for industrial use, except for nine select sectors, by manufacturers from 11 April – in view of the shortage of medical oxygen across hospitals due to a spike in Covid related casualties. “IOCL has diverted the high purity oxygen used in its Mono Ethylene Glycol (MEG) unit to produce medical grade liquid oxygen at their refinery in Panipat,” says an IOCL spokesperson. “The throughput of the unit has been scaled down to serve the more critical cause. At present, IOCL is supplying 270 tonnes of liquid medical oxygen (LMO) per day to the hospitals in Delhi, Haryana and Punjab”. IOCL is also converting 14 LNG tankers of 17 tonnes each into medical grade oxygen carriers, to strengthen the medical oxygen logistics in the country. By mid-May, over 20 road tankers and 25 ISO containers of about 820 tonnes combined capacity were pressed into action by IOCL. Transporting oxygen Meanwhile, over the next six months, IOCL will be making 10 cryogenic road tankers at its cryogenic plant at Nashik. These tankers are expected to help in transporting oxygen. BPCL’s Mumbai refinery too is in the process of supplying 40 tonnes of oxygen per day to the ‘jumbo’ Covid centre in Mumbai through a pipeline. In addition, BPCL is also supplying 1.5 tonnes per day of medical oxygen to Kerala from its refinery in Kochi. In 2020, BPCL had supplied about 25 tonnes of medical oxygen, when the average daily cases of Covid had risen during October-November. The Kochi refinery has a provision to produce and store liquid oxygen of 99.7 per cent purity. Similarly, Reliance Industries is producing over 700 tonnes of medical grade oxygen a day, which is being supplied free of cost, as a part of the company’s corporate social responsibility initiative. The oxygen is being sent to Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, bringing relief to over 70,000 ill patients. According to company sources, RIL intends to raise the production to 1,000 tonnes soon. The company had installed a plant to specially produce oxygen, after the acute shortage faced in the healthcare sector.
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By increasing the inflow of oxygen to hospitals, OMCs save lives
