POL is the most lucrative segment of railway traffic. During first 11 months of 1998-99, the railways carried 7.19 per cent more POL than the previous year despite a 2.13 per cent fall in the overall freight volume. At present, the railway inland movement of petrol committee is in-charge of holding dialogues with the Oil Coordination Committee. "Its role is limited to looking at the movement patterns. Now, we will look into the commercial aspects alsoin order to give the oil companies a positive advantage."

The `India Hydrocarbon Vision 2020' report has suggested reducing railways' share in POL traffic from 45 to 30 per cent. Criticising the lack of coordination on the issue of pipelines, Narain questioned the need for reducing the railway's share. "Pipelines should be a competition to roads and not railways. Wherever throughput is more, petroleum should be transported through pipelines else it should be by train."

He felt the traffic share should be on energy consideration and there should not be any dependence on one mode. "Road's share should be minimised and confined to distances of 50 to 100 km."

Narain pointed out that according to the national transport policy, pipelines are more efficient in terms of energy followed by railways. Transportation through roads is considered worst, he added.

A Tata Energy Research Institute's (Teri) study came up with contradictory conclusion. It said that POL transportation through rail was more efficient."We have asked for facts from Teri so that we can build a case for us. The railways wants to retain its share without compromising on the national interest of optimising energy," he said.

Narain contested the claim of Vision 2020 report that railways has limited track capacity. He said special efforts were made to see that capacity was not a constraint.

Narain said that before deregulation of the oil sector, the government policy was to let pipelines come up in coordination with the railways so that there was no duplication of investment. "But the situation has changed. For instance, we invested in broadgauging Madurai-Chennai line but a pipeline came along the same route. Same happened with the the Mangalore-Hasan route," he said.

The railways is eager for a partnership in pipelines. It is willing to pick up equity stake in Petronet on project basis by way of granting right of way for laying pipelines.

According to Narain, though oil industry's reaction has been positive, the directorate ofexplosives stipulates 30-metre distance between pipelines and track. "We do not have that much ribbon area. So, we have appealed to the directorate for making reducing the required distance. It is 10 metres in Russia and some other western countries," said Narain.