MOSCOW (MRC) -- GAIL (India) Ltd has shut its petrochemical complex in Pata, Uttar Pradesh as the nationwide lockdown severely hit demand and creates logistics bottleneck that leads to bloated warehousing issue, reported CommoPlast.
In fact, market sources informed that following the lockdown, which started on 24 March 2020, about two-thirds of trucks that used to transport the materials to buyers stopped operations.
The plant houses two ethylene crackers with a combined capacity of 950,000 tons/year. Downstream plants include 210,000 tons/year HDPE/LLDPE swing unit, 200,000 tons/year standalone HDPE units, and a 400,000 tons/year metallocene PE unit.
It is unclear when the company would restart the operation as the Indian government extended the lockdown until 3 May 2020 to combat the COVID-19 outbreak.
As MRC reported before, in May 2019, GAIL approved the revival of an existing liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) plant for conversion into a new polypropylene (PP) complex in Usar, Raigad district of Maharashtra, India. The "first of its kind project in India" will have 500,000 t/y of PP capacity, as well as an integrated propane dehydrogenation unit, at an estimated cost of Rs 8,800 crore, GAIL noted. The project is scheduled to be commissioned by fiscal year 2023-2024.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 383,760 tonnes in the first two month of 2020, up by 14% year on year. High density polyethylene (HDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) shipments increased due to the increased capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 192,760 tonnes in January-February 2020, down by 6% year on year. Homopolymer PP accounted for the main decrease in imports.
Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) is the largest state-owned natural gas processing and distribution company in India. It is headquartered in New Delhi. It has the following business segments: natural gas, liquid hydrocarbon, liquefied petroleum gas transmission, petrochemicals, city gas distribution, exploration and production, GAILTEL and electricity generation.
MRC