Stage-1 of Assam Gas Cracker project commissioned.

The first phase of long-delayed Rs. 9,285-crore Assam Gas Cracker project, the first petrochemical project in the North East, has been commissioned.

'The cracker, polypropylene (PP) unit, gas processing unit and all utilities have been commissioned,' said B C Tripathi, Chairman and Managing Director of GAIL India, the majority stake holder in Brahmaputra Crackers and Polymers Ltd. (BCPL) that is building the project.

The plant has started producing ethylene, which will form feedstock for manufacturing polymers that are basic building blocks of plastics, he said.

LLDPE/HDPE unit will be made operational after receipt of ethylene from the cracker plant. 'The entire plant will be commission in next two weeks time,' he said.

The then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on April 9, 2007 had laid the foundation stone of the project at Lepetkata, 15 km from Dibrugarh. It was at that time said that the project will take 60 months to complete, i.e. by April 2012.

But the target declines were delayed - first to December 2013, than to January 2014 and to June 2015. The project is finally being commissioned now.

ET