Page 11 - AsianOil Week 19

AsianOil SOUTH ASIA AsianOil
Indian district demands ONGC, GAIL review safety protocols
POLICY
AUTHORITIES in a district of India’s Andhra Pradesh State have ordered state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC) and GAIL (India) to produce a safety certificate for their facilities or face a suspension of operations.
East Godavari District Collector D Mural- idhar Reddy said on May 9 that the two state companies must produce a “no objection certif- icate” covering safety and maintenance at their installation within a week.
“ONGC and GAIL should conduct a field- level inspection of their installations, mostly the pipeline system, and come out with the NOC certifying that the condition of their exist- ing installations in operation is safe in the East Godavari district,” The Hindu quoted Reddy as saying.
The official summoned the companies to dis- cuss the safety of their facilities after a leak from a privately owned styrene monomer gas storage unit in Visakhapatnam killed 11 people on May 7. The Andhra Pradesh government has report- edly begun looking to shut down the LG Poly- mers-operated facility permanently, citing its
close location to a densely populated urban area. The two companies must also carry out an incident response drill, with Reddy warning that the drill must also take place within the work, or
operations will be shut down.
The deadly LG Polymers leak has shone a
light on safety issues within India’s oil and gas sector. A major fire broke out at ONGC’s oil and gas processing facility at Uran near Navi Mumbai on September 3, which killed four staff members and led to 5,000 nearby residents being evacuated as a precautionary measure.
The Standing Committee on Petroleum and Natural Gas reported in July 2018 that state- run facilities had recorded 309 accidents over financial years 2014-2015, 2015-2016 and 2016- 2017, leading to 81 deaths and 193 injuries. The Parliamentary panel added that the number of such cases at ONGC and refiner Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd’s (HPCL) installa- tions was alarmingly high. HPCL recorded 149 accidents, with 20 fatalities and 61 injuries, while ONGC reported 85 accidents with 15 fatalities and 29 injuries.™
IOC scales up refinery runs
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
STATE-RUN refiner Indian Oil Corp. (IOC) has revealed that it plans to scale up its refinery operations this month as the country’s oil prod- uct demand slowly rebounds.
The company said on May 11 that it had re-started several processing units that had been shuttered in response to the lockdown and that its refineries were operating at about 60% of designed capacity. IOC added that its refin- eries had trimmed throughputs to nearly 45% of capacity by the first week of April, owing to a steep drop in the country’s oil and gas demand.
India announced a nationwide quarantine on March 24 in order to the slow the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), leading to a 70% con- traction in national energy by the start of May. The government intends to extend the lockdown a third time on May 18, with new rules to be unveiled before that date.
IOC said that while the lockdown had hurt the entire oil product value chain, it had kept its refinery units ready to scale up once demand recovered, and it now aims to lift operations to 80% of design capacity by the end of this month.
Week 19 14•May•2020 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P11