Delhi govt’s plan to import oxygen from abroad hits hurdle

The Delhi government’s plan to import 18 cryogenic containers from Bangkok and 21 oxygen generation plants from France has hit a roadblock due to “technical and administrative” reasons, senior government officials said on Tuesday.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal announced a plan to import these on April 27, as the crippling shortage of medical oxygen came into focus. The state has now put the plan on the back-burner, according to officials who asked not to be named.

“The procurement of the tankers has been delayed due to some technical and administrative issues. It is taking longer than what we had anticipated,” a senior government official said on condition of anonymity. The officials, however, did not elaborate on what these technical and administrative issues were.

This comes at a time when the Centre has failed to ensure the supply of 700 metric tonne (MT) quota of medical oxygen to the national capital, and the Delhi government has been unable to arrange for cryogenic tankers to pick up supplies, both of which continue to remain key hurdles in ensuring an adequate amount of the medical essential, as hospitals send out desperate appeals for uninterrupted flow to save critically ill patients.

Now, to meet the growing oxygen demand in the city, the Delhi government has written to the central government, asking for 50 pressure swing adsorption (PSA) plants for Delhi, even as it continues to look for viable options of sourcing tankers from within India.

On Sunday, the central government told the Delhi high court that, on April 26, the Delhi government wrote to the Centre saying it plans to import three cryogenic tankers from Thailand and requested its help to lift those tankers through Indian Air Force aircraft. But, it said that they “never heard anything” from the Delhi government after that, and awaited the request with specific details (like the date of airlifting, bill of loading, etc.) so that the air force planes can be allocated to bring the cryogenic tankers from Bangkok.

“Till date, the Central government has not received any communication regarding the import of containers,” it told the court.

Delhi government spokespersons did not comment on the matter.

A second senior Delhi government officer said the administration is now looking at sourcing tankers from within the country.

“We have made several attempts — some have been successful, while others have failed. We have been able to procure at least five tankers on our own so far. The central government has given seven. Apart from this, the oxygen suppliers are also arranging tankers on their own. Many companies are also helping us,” said the official.

In an email to HT, oxygen supplier Linde South Asia said it was using 18 tankers (2,000 gallons each) which can transport 8.65 MT of liquid medical oxygen (LMO). It is also using 5 T-75 ISO tankers that transport 20MT of LMO. It further said it has also converted a number of liquid argon and liquid nitrogen road tankers into liquid oxygen service to boost the supply chain.

“Linde was the first to suggest the idea of renting ISO tanks from the international market to de-bottleneck the LOX (liquid oxygen) supply chain. In collaboration with our sponsors Tata Steel and ITC, Linde has been bringing such rented ISO tanks by air into the country… In collaboration with Indian Railways, Linde has further set up a railway delivery system for high speed delivery of LOX from Eastern India to Delhi. This has been tried for the first time in this country, and till Monday, 2 such rakes each capable of carrying 120 MT LOX and 1 rake capable of carrying 80 MT LOX have already been deployed and more will be deployed in the days to come,” the company said.

Oxygen plants at Delhi hospitals
Senior government officials said that two of the four PSA oxygen plants being set up by DRDO are going to be operational by Wednesday. Apart from this, in 10 days, Delhi has set up PSA oxygen plants in at least four state-run hospitals, taking the total number of Delhi government hospitals having oxygen generation plants to five.

These hospitals are Burari hospital, Deen Dayal Upadhyay (DDU) hospital, Lok Nayak hospital, Baba Saheb Ambedkar hospital in Rohini and Sanjay Gandhi Memorial hospital.

The plant at Sanjay Gandhi Memorial hospital was set up on Tuesday and deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said it will be operationalised from Wednesday. It is one of the four small-sized oxygen generation plants donated by France. The other three have been used at BLK Hospital, Haryana Super Specialty Hospital and state-run Ambedkar Hospital.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the defence ministry said two of the four plants to be set up by DRDO have reached Delhi and are being installed at AIIMS and RML hospital, respectively.

While these two will be ready by Wednesday, the other two will be set up by May 10. These are to be installed at AIIMS Trauma Centre, Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Safdarjung Hospital, Lady Hardinge Medical College and one at AIIMS, Jhajjar, Haryana. There are all hospitals run by the Union government. Hindustan Times