Assam refinery sings MoU with IWAI to facilitate waterways transporting

Guwahati, Aug 31: As Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) in eastern Assam of northeast Bharat is set embark on a major refinery expansion project to treble its existing refining capacity from 3 to 9 MMTPA, it has recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI ) for transporting over-dimensional and over-weight cargo using the waterways.

Union Ports, Shipping and Waterways Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, who was present at the MoU signing function at Kunjaban-NRL township, commented that the new initiative will pave the way for making rivers navigable throughout the year by IWAI and assist in bringing large cargoes and capital equipment including single piece prefabricated process plants for the refinery expansion project.

“It will also open up trade and commerce activities as outward freight movement in large consignment to be possible from River Dhansiri, adjoining the refinery in near future and it would finally help extending our footprint to global export destinations,” said Sonowal in virtual presence of Union Minister Rameshwar Teli, where IWAI North-Eastern Director P Srinivasan and NRL senior official AP Chakraborty signed the documents.

Sonowal also added that the NRL expansion project will set a new pace and narrative of faster developments and unbridled progress of northeast Bharat. He offered heartiest thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the great vision to expand the industrial landscape of the region. He inspected the site of NRL jetty on Dhansiri River on eve of the function.

It may be mentioned that under the Hydrocarbon Vision 2030, the NRL has set to enhance its refining capacity to 9 MMTPA and as part of the project over 1,000 equipments, many of those fall under the category of over-dimensional consignment and also over-weight consignment, will be transported from across the country and abroad.

NRL intends to implement multimodal transportation through road and water ways to secure delivery of the equipment. Due to various limitations in road transportation, the sea and river routes will be leveraged to connect the major ports in western region of Bharat to the north-eastern region. The waterways can also be used in future for shipping of dry cargo from the refinery and agricultural produce from the region.

Under the Act East policy, the Centre has given special emphasis on improving the waterways for envisaging seamless connectivity of Northeast with other parts of the country. The north-eastern region is otherwise connected with the mainland through the chicken-neck corridor in north Bengal. With about 4500 km of international border with neighbors like Bhutan, Tibet (China), Myanmar and Bangladesh, the region remains strategically and economically crucial.