MOSCOW (MRC) -- Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd’s plant restarted operations on Monday after a nearly 10-day closure caused by a September 20 fire that has claimed the lives of two employees, said Telegraphindia.
Parijat Bhattacharya, 40, a senior manager who was among the 15 injured staffers, died in hospital on Monday. An engineer, Bhattacharya was a resident of Agarpara on the northern fringes of Calcutta. Last week, Saurav Samanta, an operator, died. The condition of at least one more employee is said to be critical.
"We are extremely saddened. We have lost two valuable colleagues," general manager (human resources) Debasis Sen said. On Friday, a section of the employees agitated against the top management, blaming it for not taking adequate safety measures.
Sen said the grievances of the employees have been conveyed to the top management and the matter was being looked into.
According to Das, production at the naphtha cracker unit, where the blaze started following a suspected leak, would start shortly.
The company resumed production at cracker in Haldia in the West Bengal state, which can produce 700,000 tonnes/year of ethylene and 350,000 tonnes/year of propylene.
As it was written earlier, on 20 September, a major fire broke out at Haldia Petrochemicals’ cracker in India on Friday, injuring at least 10 to 12 people.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polyprolypele (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,255,800 tonnes in the first seven months of 2019, up by 9% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. At the same time, the estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 796,120 tonnes in January-July 2019, up by 11% year on year. Shipments of PP block copolymer and homopolymer PP increased.
Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd is a modern naphtha based petrochemical complex at Haldia, West Bengal, India. Haldia has played the role of a catalyst in emergence of more than 500 downstream processing industries in West Bengal with a capacity to process more than 3,50,000 TPA of polymers, among which are PE and PP.
MRC