A major blast at the ammonia-urea unit-II of the Namrup-based Brahmaputra Valley Fertiliser Corporation Ltd (BVFCL) shortly after Sunday midnight, severely damaged the plant. The entire unit has been shut down for an indefinite period following the incident.
The explosion occurred at 12.45am because of a technical glitch. No one was injured as most of the employees had left by then.
A similar blast took place at the same fertiliser unit on May 19, 2019, causing heavy damages to the entire unit, including expensive machineries. It took three months to make the unit functional.
Immediately after the blast on Monday, a raging fire broke out in the factory building. Fire tenders were called in from Dibrugarh, Duliajan, Naharkatia and Chabua air force station. The fire was contained after nearly three hours.
“The blast occurred in the pipeline connecting the high pressure ammonia synthesis gas compressor and the ammonia reactor which goes through the pre-heated furnace in the unit-II. Obsolete and outdated machineries and equipment are the cause of explosion. The life of a chemical plant is barely 20 years, but the Namrup unit is almost 43 years old. We are forced to run it as the proposed fourth unit is yet to be set up. The loss assessment is being carried out,” public relations officer of BVFCL Pranab Bhattacharjee said.
At the time of the incident, the Namrup-II unit was generating 200 tonnes of urea per day.
“We are staring at a long shutdown. The losses sustained are expected to be several crores. The machineries and equipment damaged are also not easily available. Union minister of chemicals and fertilisers D.V. Sadananda Gowda during his visit to the BVFCL plant in September 2019 had announced that work on the fourth unit would be taken up soon while the existing two units (units II and III) would be revamped and refitted with new machineries. But still no progress has been made,” said Tileswar Bora, the general secretary of the Namrup Fertiliser Shramik Union.
Last year, the Centre approved the proposal in-principle for setting up of the Namrup unit-IV on a nomination basis proposing an equity share of 52 per cent to Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers Ltd (RCF), 26 per cent to Oil India Ltd (OIL), 11 per cent to the government of Assam and 11 per cent to the BVFCL. The project is expected to cost Rs 4,500 crore.
In 1986, the Namrup unit-I plant was phased out by the authorities.
