Nepal Oil Corporation is going to establish biggest Aviation turbine Fuel (ATF) depot till date at Bhairahawa. The corporation is set to establish the biggest ATF depot for under construction Gautam Buddha International Airport (GBIA).
The fuel depot will have storage capacity of around 10,000 kiloliter (1 crore liter) aviation turbine fuel.
Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA), the only international airport fuel depot has capacity to store around 7801 kiloliter of ATF and across the country, altogether there are only around 8500 kiloliter fuel storage capacity.
NOC is set to establish new duel depot at Bhairahawa as there is no enough land available at TIA to expand the capacity of TIA depot. Corporation official stated that, with the construction of new international airport, there is high probability of increase in flight frequency thus they will be constructing modern fuel depot at the airport.
NOC had asked CAAN to provide land for the construction of fuel depot at GBIA and the authority has also agreed to provide land to establish the fuel depot. Currently, Bhairahawa Airport has capacity to hold 56 kiloliter of fuel.
As per the study, the fuel depot will hold 4 tanks with capacity of 2500 kiloliters each. The 4 tanks will hold a total of 10680 kiloliter fuel.
The fuel depot will feature seven gates including gates for pump unloading, office entrance, contact office, emergency exit, disaster management and vehicles maintenance.
The corporation will also establish depot at Bhadrapur in Jhapa with 1500 kiloliter capacity and around 760 kiloliter capacity depots at Biratnagar.
Currently only Kathmandu, Biratnagar, Nepalgunj, Bhairahawa, Pokhara, Surkhet and Dhangadhi has fuel depot while most of the airport don’t have fuel depots. There is provision of temporary fuel depot at Bhadrapur and Manthali and airlines operating to airport without fuel depot have to carry fuel from TIA.
NOC official stated that they will be establishing fuel depots at airports with high flight operation and having high demand of fuel and stated CAAN is also hoping for the same.
