Bongaigaon Refinery is an

oil refinery An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refined into useful products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, asphalt base, fuel oils, heating oil, kerosene, lique ...

and

petrochemical Petrochemicals (sometimes abbreviated as petchems) are the chemical products obtained from petroleum by refining. Some chemical compounds made from petroleum are also obtained from other fossil fuels, such as coal or natural gas, or renewable sou ...

complex located in the city of

Bongaigaon Bongaigaon () is a major city in the Indian state of Assam. Its urban area spans across Bongaigaon and Chirang district. The city also serves as the gateway of the North-East Frontier Railway Zone with its New Bongaigaon Junction railway sta ...

in the administrative district of Chirang in

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

. It was announced in 1969 and construction began in 1972.

History

On 5 December 1972, the then

Prime Minister of India The prime minister of India (IAST: ) is the head of government of the Republic of India. Executive authority is vested in the prime minister and their chosen Council of Ministers, despite the president of India being the nominal head of the ...

Indira Gandhi Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (; Given name, ''née'' Nehru; 19 November 1917 – 31 October 1984) was an Indian politician and a central figure of the Indian National Congress. She was elected as third prime minister of India in 1966 ...

announced in the

Lok Sabha The Lok Sabha, constitutionally the House of the People, is the lower house of India's bicameral Parliament, with the upper house being the Rajya Sabha. Members of the Lok Sabha are elected by an adult universal suffrage and a first-past ...

the Government's decision to set up a new

Refinery A refinery is a production facility composed of a group of chemical engineering unit processes and unit operations refining certain materials or converting raw material into products of value. Types of refineries Different types of refineries ...

-cum-

Petrochemical Petrochemicals (sometimes abbreviated as petchems) are the chemical products obtained from petroleum by refining. Some chemical compounds made from petroleum are also obtained from other fossil fuels, such as coal or natural gas, or renewable sou ...

complex in

. The foundation stone of the complex was laid on 19 January 1972 at

Bongaigaon Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited The Bongaigaon Refinery & Petrochemicals Ltd. (BRPL) now IOCL, Bongaigaon Refinery (BGR) is a petroleum refinery company in India. It was incorporated on 20 February 1974 by the government of India. The company began with initial funds of Rs. ...

(BRPL) was incorporated as

Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...

Undertaking under the administrative control of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas on 20 February 1974. The company became a subsidiary of IndianOil (

IOC The International Olympic Committee (IOC; french: link=no, Comité international olympique, ''CIO'') is a non-governmental sports organisation based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It is constituted in the form of an association under the Swiss ...

) on 29 March 2001 after

disinvestment Disinvestment refers to the use of a concerted economic boycott to pressure a government, industry, or company towards a change in policy, or in the case of governments, even regime change. The term was first used in the 1980s, most commonly in ...

s of share by

Govt of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...

. BRPL has the distinction of being the first indigenous grass root Refinery in the country integrated with a Petrochemical complex at one location. At present, the

is processing crude available from the oil fields of

ONGC The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) is a central public sector undertaking under the ownership of Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India. It is headquartered in New Delhi. ONGC was founded on 14 August 1956 by the ...

and

OIL An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...

located in the North-East India and Ravva

crude oil Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crude ...

from the Krishna Godavari basin off the coast of

Andhra Pradesh Andhra Pradesh (, abbr. AP) is a state in the south-eastern coastal region of India. It is the seventh-largest state by area covering an area of and tenth-most populous state with 49,386,799 inhabitants. It is bordered by Telangana to the ...

. The capacity of the Refinery was augmented in 1995 to 2.35 million

tonne The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United State ...

s per year (51,400 barrels per stream day ) through expansion of the Refinery consisting of one Crude Distillation Unit (CDU-II) and one Delayed Coking Unit (DCU-II). A LPG bottling plant of capacity 22000 MTPA was added to the complex and commissioned in March 2003. When oil was found in Assam in the 1960s, the Assamese wanted this refined within the state. But Assamese consumption of products was tiny: most of the consumption would be in West Bengal and Bihar. So the government decided to pump Assamese crude to a refinery at Barauni, Bihar. However, Assamese students protested, and blockaded oil supply in 1980. A committee was appointed to suggest a new refining location within Assam. The students thought this would be near the oilfields. Instead the committee suggested Bongaigaon, far away from the oilfields and as close as possible to West

Bengal Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...

, which would consume most of the products. This was a compromise between the politics and economics of refinery location. The refinery recently merged with the IOCL in 2009.

Sources

{{Reflist

External links

www.swaminomics.org
Energy in Assam Oil refineries in India Companies based in Assam Indian Oil Corporation buildings and structures 1972 establishments in Assam Indian companies established in 1972