Guwahati, May 28: Assam government has taken up 26 percent stakes in the Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL), the largest refinery in the State.
Assam Chief Minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma said, “As Finance minister in the 2020-21 budget I have planned to increase our stake in the refinery and made a budgetary provision of Rs 1400 Crore. With the disinvestment of BPCL around it was a tough call to keep NRL out of disinvestment. We approached Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.”
He added, “To maintain the PSU nature of the refinery, OIL was roped in. We did not want to lose this opportunity for we had once lost the opportunity while the refinery was set up. On the eve of assembly polls, we discussed this with the Prime minister while he was in Jonai in Assam. It was decided that a token amount will be paid before March 31 and OIL will pay the whole amount pertaining to the state government’s stake.”
Numaligarh Refinery, popularly known as “Accord Refinery” is the largest among the four refineries operating in Assam. The refinery was set up as per Clause 7 of the Assam Accord.
On 25th March, 2021 a Share Purchase Agreement (SPA) was signed between BPCL and consortium of Oil India Ltd. (OIL) and Engineers India Limited (EIL) for sale of 43.05 crore shares in NRL to the consortium at a consideration of Rs. 9,375.96 crores. EIL paid Rs.700 crores for 3.21 crore shares while OIL bought 39.84 crore shares for Rs. 8,675.96 crores.
The remaining 2.29 crore equity shares held by BPCL have been purchased by the Government of Assam for Rs. 500 crores. With these transactions, BPCL has transferred its entire 61.65% holding in NRL to the Consortium and Government of India. The Assam government initially had 12.35 which increased to 26 percent.
Oil India Limited (OIL) has paid Rs 2187 Crore on behalf of the Government of India while Assam government paid Rs 500 Crore in March last year. On Thursday the state government paid another Rs 500 Crore.
Sarma said Rs 1000 Crore has been paid to OIL and the rest will be paid by September this year. “With NRL people of Assam have an emotional connection. The amount of investment we are making will come back to us in the next three to four years. Last year we got a dividend of Rs 335 Crore.”
Assam Chief Minister further added that his government, along with OIL, will re-energise Namrup Fertiliser project. “We are partners with OIL in four or five projects. PSU Brahmaputra Cracker and Polymer Ltd (BCPL) in Lepatkata has started making profits. With an investment of Rs 1500 Crore we are coming up with a 500 Tons Per Day (TPD) methanol expansion project of Assam Petrochemicals Limited (APL) at Namrup,” he said.
