Industrial units of Paradip under scan

Port units in line of fire

MANOJ KAR

Paradip, Sept 30: The Jagatsinghpur district administration has sought assistance of the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) finding out the impact of dredging activities by a public sector oil refinery project. Four industrial units in and around Paradip came under the line of fire for alleged violation of environmental norms at the Rehabilitation and Peripheral Development Advisory Committee (RPDAC) review meeting held yesterday. Members of the committee from gram panchayats, which come under the project areas, expressed anger at the erosion in villages caused by dredging. They passed a proposal for assessment of the impact of dredging works. The RPDAC resolved to constitute a task force to oversee proper implementation of peripheral activities by the units — Essar steel project, IFFCO fertiliser plant, Deepak Fertilizer and Indian Oil Corporation’s oil refinery project. “Dredging by the oil refinery near Paradip has led to erosion in seaside villages. Moreover, the artificially created brackish water pond by the refinery project has resulted in increased salinity level of ground water and iron contents in drinking water from deep-dug tube wells,” Jagatsinghpur MP Bibhu Prasad Tarai said. “It was decided to seek the services of the NIO to ascertain whether the Indian Oil Company Limited’s oil refinery was responsible for erosion,” said Jagatsinghpur collector Narayan Chandra Jena. Agriculture minister Damodar Rout, Jagatsinghpur MLA Bishnu Charan Das, Erasama-Balikuda MLA Prasanta Muduli, representatives of zilla parishad and members of panchayati raj institutions attended the meeting chaired by revenue divisional commissioner (central) Pradipta Mohapatra. (Sourced from Telegraph)

Rs 500 crore to be invested by IFFCO to modernize Paradip plant.

Fertilizer cooperative major Indian Farmers Fertilizer Co-operative Ltd., IFFCO], has unveiled n ambitious plan to invest Rs 500 crore over the next four years to modernize and upgrade its diammonium phosphate (DAP) plant at Paradeep. Once completed by the end of 2014, the plant’s 
production capacity will go up from the present level of 19.2 lakh ton per annum to three million ton. “We will raise the required fund from internal accruals. The proposed investment is to retrofit the existing DAP plant with pipe reactor technology and increase the output by 30%”, IFFCO Executive Director M.R. Patel told “The ET” over phone from Paradeep. The existing conventionally designed Paradeep unit has three streams of DAP/NP fertilizers in operation, he said. IFPCO has achieved highest ever production of 15 lakh MT of fertiliser in 2009-10 fiscal, surpassing its previous record of 13.06 lakh MT in 2008-09. Mr Patel said, the cooperative giant has begun preliminary talks with Hindustan Dorr Oliver for pipe reaction system to meet the challenge of low cost of production, high production volumes and highest possible conversion efficiencies. The other advantage of the technology is that it lowers energy consumption by 25% and results in lower emission of pollutants like ammonia, he added. IFFCO took over the Paradeep plant from Oswal Chemicals and Fertilizers in 2005 by paying Rs.2080 crore. So far it has spent additional Rs.1500 crore to revamp the unit and resume production. From a production of 30,000 tons of DAP/NPK at the time of acquisition, the output of the unit had gradually gone up to 7.5 lakh tons in 2006-07 and 15 lakh tons in 2009-10.