The Hindu Business Line : ONGC resumes gas production at Hazira

Due to suspension of production, nearly all its consumers, including the 80-odd companies across western, northern and central India, remained paralysed

Ahmedabad , Aug 20

Twelve days after suspending work due to the unprecedented floods in the Tapi river that submerged the entire premises in 6-20 ft of water, ONGC has resumed processing (production) and supply of gas from its Hazira facility last evening, said Plant Head and Executive Director, Mr P.K. Johari.

Speaking to Business Line over telephone from Hazira, he said that six million standard cubic metres per day (mscmd) of gas production, in the first phase, resumed at 6.30 p.m. yesterday.

Supply of gas to major consumers such as Reliance Group's petrochemical units and Essar's power and steel units and others has also resumed.

Due to non-availability of gas Reliance had shut down two of its petrochemical units at Hazira and IPCL at Vadodara, while Essar curtailed steel production to half and scaled down power production from 600 MW to 100 MW.

Other companies depending on ONGC's gas supply also faced similar shortages.

Earlier, Mr N.K. Mitra, Director (Offshore) of ONGC, had hoped production would resume on August 18, but technical glitches made it difficult. The Hazira facility is expected to go full steam in the next few days.

ONGC had suffered production loss of about Rs 20 crore a day since stopping production altogether from the midnight of August 7, excluding losses to the plant, machinery and infrastructure, besides its employees and officials.

Due to this suspension, nearly all its consumers, including the 80-odd companies across western, northern and central India, remained paralysed.

Their losses are also being assessed. The Hazira plant, set up in 1985 and having an annual turnover of about Rs.7,000 crore, never faced such a natural calamity.

To put the things back on rails at the earliest, ONGC had started efforts on a war-footing by forming three committees at Mumbai to ensure quickest relief and restoration at Hazira.

It enrolled equipment suppliers such as ABB, Siemens, BHEL, Tata-Honeywell and Keltron to set the plants and machinery right.

Apart from local staff, it temporarily redeployed those staff who were transferred from Hazira and brought in about 1,000 contract labourers to dewater and flush out mud from different areas in the plant premises.

Doctors, food and supplies were also airlifted from Mumbai and other places and drinking water from Mehsana and Ankleshwar to Hazira on a daily basis for 1,200 employees and their families.

Luckily, none of the 276 men on duty on August 7-8 suffered any injuries, although about 50 of them were in an extremely grave situation.

ONGC's Hazira facility is the largest industrial gas processing plant in the country, supplying more than 40 mscmd of gas per day, which is nearly half of India's 91 mscmd gas supply per day. Its gas is about 80 per cent methane, apart from ethane and propane.

It procures gas from its western offshore's South Bassein field and the Panna-Mukta-Tapti (PMT) facility, a joint venture of ONGC, Reliance and British Gas. It supplies gas to the Hazira-based industrial giants and about 80 other companies across north, central and western India through the GAIL's Hazira-Vijaypur-Jagdishpur (HVJ) Pipeline.

Besides, the Hazira facility also produces two million tones per annum of value-added products like naphtha, LPG, HSD and kerosene.

In Hazira, its major gas customers include Reliance, Essar, NTPC, Kribhco, GSPC and GGCL.

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