Assam Refineries To Restart Plants Today

J M B Barauh, chairman and managing director of Bongaigaon Refineries & Petrochemicals Ltd (BRPL), told Business Standard yesterday that the company was prepared to resume operations at its main crude distillation plant within an hour of resumption of crude supply. The plant was shut down on Friday. He said: We have sufficient intermediate stock to run our secondary units for more than a week. I hope there will be no need for closing down these units as the pipeline will probably be restored soon.

Out of BRPL's 10 plants, only one had to be shut down following the halt in crude supply. The high speed diesel, kerosene, petrochemicals and fibre units are functioning as usual. Although BRPL has the capacity to process 8,000 tonnes of crude per day, it has been processing only about 2,500 tonnes per day due to inadequate crude supply by OIl. Till last year, OIL was supplying only 1.1 million tonnes of crude per annum to the 2.7 MMTPA refinery whose rated capacity is 2.35 MMTPA.