MRPL shuts down refinery due to water shortage

MRPL shuts down refinery due to water shortage

Mangalore Today / PTI

Mangalore, April 19, 2012: Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL) has completely shutdown its 15 million tons a year refinery following shortage of water.

"We had been operating the plant at one-third of the capacity since April 13. The continuing water shortage forced us to take complete shutdown of the refinery now," MRPL Managing Director Uttam Kumar Basu told PTI.

 

 

Meanwhile, the company has approached the Karnataka High Court seeking direction to local authorities for immediately releasing 2.5 million gallons of water per day from the neighbouring Nethravathi river.

"We have prayed to the Hon’ble court that the calculations done by local authorities in withdrawing water supply to Mangalore refinery are flawed. They have not factored in the inflow and so we have prayed for immediate release of water for us to begin operations," he said.

Basu said MRPL has declared "force majeaure" at the refinery and all shipments except those to Mauritius, which relies on India for meeting its fuel needs, will be affected.

Crude oil imports have been stopped as the company already had a huge inventory, he said MRPL begin shuting down different units on Tuesday and currently only crude distillation unit (CDU) was operational.

"CDU too is now being shutdown," he said.

MRPL, a subsidiary of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), received around 5.5 million gallons of water daily from Nethravathi river.

Water availability in the Nethravathi river and its downstream dams started depleting from the end of March and the refinery is not getting any supplies currently, he said.

"As a result the district authorities enforced reduction of water supply to MRPL to one-third level and finally on April 11, 2012, completely stopped the intake of water from the Nethravathi river," he said.

Mangalore refinery has three crude units -- Phase I of 4.68 million tonnes, Phase II of 7.14 million tonnes and Phase III of 3 million tonnes -- and supplies oil products in southern states.

From April 13, it had shutdown Phase-II and III and now it has closed even Phase-I.
The shutdown would lead to shortage of supply of products to MRPL fed locations.