Paswan’s mission fertiliser begins with Namrup unit

Union Minister for Fertilisers and Chemicals Ram Vilas Paswan today announced a new state-of-the-art unit at Namrup in Assam that would help take India’s fertiliser output to 270 lakh metric tonne by 2010.

Union Minister for Fertilisers and Chemicals Ram Vilas Paswan today announced a new state-of-the-art unit at Namrup in Assam that would help take India’s fertiliser output to 270 lakh metric tonne by 2010. The announcement also sets rolling the plans to revive as many as eight sick or closed public sector fertiliser factories in the country.

Namrup will get a new, Rs 2,500-crore grassroot plant in the next four to five years that would double the fertiliser output with the same amount of natural gas being used now, while the closed plants at Sindri, Barauni, Gorakhpur, Durgapur, Haldia, Talcher and Ramagundam would be revived in a phased manner in less than a decade, said the minister.

‘‘The country’s fertiliser demand has been increasing. Last year, 229 lakh tonne urea was consumed, though we were able to produce about 200 lakh tonne,’’ Paswan, who was here to formally launch the revived Namrup-III plant of the Brahmaputra Valley Fertiliser Corporation Ltd (BVFCL), said.

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He said Projects Development India Ltd (PDIL), the country’s leading public sector consultants, had already said that the seven plants, currently idle, were viable, provided certain major modifications were effected. ‘‘The fertiliser ministry has prepared a macro-plan for revival of these seven units,’’ Paswan said. The total financial burden was yet to be worked out.

While most of the currently closed plants had a feedstock problem, there were also certain other problems being looked into. ‘‘High cost of feedstock such as naphtha is one of the main reasons for closure of these plants. But switchover to natural gas is also not easy because of a shortfall in gas availability,’’ he said. The government would therefore examine transportation of a huge stock of natural gas currently lying unused in Tripura for boosting fertiliser production in the country, Paswan said. The Namrup plants, which were the first in the whole of Asia to have used natural gas as feedstock, on the other hand, have been suffering due to frequent trippings in gas supply by Oil India Ltd, and Tripura could help stabilise gas supply to these plants in the long run, he indicated.

The three Namrup plants, set up in 1969, 1976 and 1987, however would now be phased out to facilitate establishment of a new grassroot plant that would produce 8 lakh tonne of urea per annum with the same amount of gas (1.72 MMSCMD) that is currently used for producing 4 to 5 lakh tonne. The Namrup plants, which ran into losses after they were tagged with three loss-making plants at Durgapur, Haldia and Barauni under Hindustan Fertiliser Corporation Ltd, were in 2002 bifurcated and renamed Brahmaputra Valley Fertilizer Corporation Ltd (BVFCL)

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