NRL sets up Rs 87 cr Naphtha unit in Assam

Assam-based Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL), a subsidiary of Bharat Petroleum (BPCL), today commissioned its Naphtha Splitter Unit which has been set up in order to facilitate supply of petrochemical grade Naphtha to Brahmaputra Cracker and Polymer Ltd (BCPL), also known as Assam Gas Cracker Project, at Lepetkata near Dibrugarh in Upper Assam.

The Unit was formally inaugurated by Dipak Chakravarty, managing director of NRL, in presence of other senior company officials at the refinery site in Numaligarh in Golaghat district.

Executed at a project cost of Rs 87 crore, the Naphtha Splitter Project funded entirely from internal sources will supply 160 Thousand Metric Tonnes (TMT) of petrochemical grade Naphtha annually which would be utilised as feed stock in BCPL's plant.

The  Unit  will convert the Naphtha generated in the Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) and Hydrocracker Unit(HCU) of the Refinery and convert it into paraffin rich Naphtha, suitable to be used as feedstock in  Naphtha Cracker unit of  the Gas Cracker Project, a company press statement informed.

The Gas Cracker Project is nearing its completion and is expected to be commissioned next year.

Time-overruns due to various reasons had escalated the cost of the project to Rs 8,920 crore. The original cost of the project, was Rs 5,460 crore.

NRL is also presently aggressively pursuing its refinery expansion plan from present 3 MMTPA (million metric tonnes per annum) to 9 MMTPA.

The estimated investment in the refinery expansion and the associated crude oil pipeline project would be in the range of Rs 14,000 crore, company sources informed.