NEW DELHI, April 10—The Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) has recovered the loss, estimated at Rs 14.47 crore, from the insurance company caused by outlawed ULFA when it blew up one of its fuel tanks in Digboi refinery last month, Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister, Ram Naik told the Lok Sabha this morning. Replying to a Question Hour discussion, the Minister asserting that security cover of all oil installations in the country has been beefed up, said that suspected ULFA militants fired at a tank containing 4500 kilolitres of petrol at Digboi Refinery of IOCL. As a result, fire broke out in the tank. While there was no injury to any personnel due to this fire, IOCL, suffered an estimated loss of Rs 14.47 crore, which was covered by insurance.
The Minister said though the tank could not be saved, other fuel tanks located nearby could be saved and the fire contained. He said the incident was the fallout of law and order problem and Army, State police were working on it and attempts would be made to avoid a similar situation in the future. In response to questions whether adequate security measures were adopted to prevent such attacks in the future, Sri Naik said that whatever the Ministry could do in this regard was being done.
Immediately after the incident an Additional Secretary from the Ministry was sent to Assam and meeting was held with top army and State police officers besides the State’s Chief Secretary. “However, security problem goes beyond the oil companies,” he added. The Minister, however, denied the possibility of any criminal conspiracy between the officials and insurance company to recover the amount. He said theattack was a result of a law and order problem and had nothing do with the officials. The Minister was responding to a query by a member Bhaskararao Patil, who wanted to know if the attack was the result of a nexus between the officials of the OIL company and insurance company to recover the insurance money.
Several members including Ravindra Kumar Pandey and Santosh Mohan Dev and others wanted to know why the Government failed to stop such attacks given the fact that the militant outfit was known to have targeted oil installations in the State in the past. They also sought a report on similar attacks by the militant outfit.
Earlier, Sri Dev said that taking insurance cover was not enough and security needed to be beefed up as ULFA has adopted the tactics of firing rockets, which can be launched from a distance. Similar incidents have taken place in Tripura as well and beefing up security around the installation may not be enough, he opined.
Meanwhile, in a separate reply in the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Santosh Kumar gangway said that allocation of additional 1.5 MMTPA of ravva crude to Bongaigaon Refinery and Petrochemical Limited (BRPL) would lead to increase in overall availability of crude to the four refineries in Assam including the Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL).
Presently, capacity utilization of four refineries including Guwahati refinery, BRPL, Digboi and NRL are low on account of inadequate availability of crude oil. For instance as against installed capacity of 3 MMTPA, NRL has been supplied 1.87 MMTPA of crude during the last financial year. The capacity utilization of the Refinery has been hovering around 62-76 per cent in the past two financial years.