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Indian GAIL inks pact to market polymers from upcoming BCPL plant

https://www.chemnet.com   Aug 03,2010
India's state-run gas transmission utility GAIL Saturday signed an
agreement with Brahmaputra Cracker and Polymer Limited to market all the
petrochemical products from the latter's upcoming natural gas and naphtha
cracker complex in the northeastern state of Assam.


GAIL owns a 70% stake in BCPL, whose cracker at Lepetkata in the
Dibrugarh district of Assam state is expected to be ready toward the end of
2012.


Under the deal, GAIL will market 220,000 mt of high density polyethylene
and linear low density polyethylene along with 60,000 mt of polypropylene
produced annually from the BCPL plant, the company said in a statement.


The agreement is expected to add polypropylene to GAIL's products
portfolio and raise its polymer marketing volumes by more than 50% to 780,000
mt/year by fiscal 2012-2013 (April-March). The company currently has an
approximately 21% share of India's polyethylene market.


The BCPL plant's polymer output will encompass packaging film,
rotomolding, injection molding, raffia, and blow molding, and will cater to
the country's northeastern market, GAIL said.


The production is expected to boost the supply in the northeast of
various end-user products such as water storage tanks, household items,
housewares, crates, buckets and packaging materials, woven sacks for packaging
of fertilizers and cement, and containers for edible oil and chemicals.


The $1.13 billion cracker has deferred its completion target a couple of
times. In 2007, the target was set for 2011. Last month, the company said the
time line had slipped by about six months from the April 2012 target.


BCPL was incorporated in January 2007 as a joint venture between GAIL
(70%), upstream minnow Oil India Limited (10%), state-run Numaligarh Refinery
Limited (10%), and the government of Assam (10%).


The project has a debt-equity ratio of 2:1 and achieved financial
closure in October 2009.


BCPL's integrated petrochemical complex at Lepetkata will have the
capacity to produce 60,000 mt/year of propylene, 220,000 mt/year of
HDPE/LLDPE, 60,000 mt/year of polypropylene, 55,000 mt/year of raw pyrolysis
gasoline and 12,500 mt/year of fuel oil.


OIL and NRL have agreed to supply 6 million cubic meters/day (211,800
Mcf/d) of natural gas and 160,000 mt/year of naphtha, respectively, as
feedstock to the complex. The balance requirement of 1 million-1.3 million cu
m/d of gas is expected to be met by state-owned producer Oil and Natural Gas
Corp.
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