Underground facility to be constructed on east coast by South Asia LPG Co Pvt Ltd, a jv of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation and TotalFina of France. Sept 1999. Project design comprises three caverns in rock 145 m below sea level to provide 60,000 t storage capacity. Location underground will eliminate damage by cyclones and reduce potential for sabotage. Completion in early-2003 at estimated cost of Rs2 billion. January 2000.  Four companies have been shortlisted for the country's first underground Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) storage facility at Visakhapatnam. South Asia LPG Company Ltd (SALPG), a joint venture between Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) and the French oil major TotalFinaElf, which is implementing the project, has shortlisted four international companies for executing the project on a turnkey basis. The four companies are S.K. Engineering Co of Korea, LG Engineering and Construction Co.; Sweden's NCC International AB-France's Sofragaz jv, and JGC Corporation of Japan. The four have been asked to submit their detailed financial and technical bids by next month. The project requires a U-shaped cavern at a depth of 162 metres below ground, . The cavern itself will 24 m-high and 317 m-long for a the total storage capacity of 60,000 tons. Construction to start in May or June this year. 05/02.The commissioning of the country's first underground LPG storage facility by SALPG at Visakhapatnam, one of the deepest mined caverns in the world, is scheduled for June 2007. SALPG, a joint venture between Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) and Total Gas & Power India, a wholly owned subsidiary of French company Total, is setting up the mined cavern for LPG storage at a cost of Rs3.3 billion, with a capacity to store 60,000 tonnes of LPG.The internal walls of the storage facility are not subjected to concreting and the natural surface of the rocks deep within the earth would store the LPG. The stored product is prevented from escaping on the principle of hydraulic containment, whereby the cavern is located at such a depth that the water naturally present in the surrounding rock creates a counter pressure higher than the pressure of the stored product, preventing it from migrating. The water pressure in the rock can be enhanced artificially by special water supply systems (water curtains). In this case, the main storage is located 162 metres below Mean Sea Level (MSL), with the deepest portion being 196 metres below MSL. The underground construction involved excavation of a 4-m diameter vertical shaft that extends up to a depth of 196 m below MSL. At 144 m below MSL, the operation shaft is connected to the water curtain gallery on the basis of the containment principle. Further down, at 178 m below MSL, the operation shaft is connected to the main storage zone by a 4.5 m-high tunnel, called the cavern operation shaft lower connection. The main storage cavern comprises components such as upper shaft connection, east and west cavern main galleries and intermediate connection, which together give a volume of 123,000 cubic metres. The work involved continuous underground blasting of rock, which was powdered and lifted up the shaft for disposal outside. Larsen & Toubro is undertaking the cavern construction work. Visit www.lntecc.com 50/06.