Modi lays foundation of 2 more engineering colleges, 3 oil plants in Assam

SILAPATHAR: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today laid the foundation of two more engineering colleges at Dhemaji and Sualkuchi in Kamrup district of Assam.

He laid the foundations virtually participating in a mammoth rally at Silapathar in Dhemaji district. He also inaugurated three petroleum processing units worth Rs 3000 crore from the same rally.

The two engineering colleges, the first ever on the north bank of the Brahmaputra, will offer degrees in civil, mechanical and computer science. Laying the foundations, Modi said three more similar engineering colleges would come up in the north bank.

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The seventh government engineering college of the state at Dhemaji has been built in a plot of 276 bigha of land at a cost of Rs 44.98 crore.

The Sualkuchi Engineering College will be built in a plot of 116 bighas of land with an outlay of Rs 54.71 crore.

Modi also said the people of Assam are going to benefit a lot from the new education policy. “Just imagine how every section of the society, including the tea community, will benefit when students will be taught in their local languages. The Assam government is taking the initiative to implement it at the earliest,” he said.

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Inaugurating the petroleum processing plants at Bongaigaon Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd, Oil India Ltd at Makum in Tinsukia district and Madhuban in Dibrugarh district, the prime minister said when his government assumed office in 2014, only 40 per cent households in Assam had access to LPG. “It has increased manifold under our government,” he said.

The oil sector projects include IOCL-INDMAX unit at Bongaigaon, Oil India Ltd’s (OIL) Secondary Tank Farm (STF) at Madhuban and a Gas Compressor Station (GCS) at Hebeda village in Makum.

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The Rs 2600 crore INDMAX unit has been set up to leverage the technology developed indigenously by Indian Oil-R&D to produce a higher LPG and high-octane gasoline yield from heavy feedstocks.

 The design capacity of the Unit is 0.74 MMTPA, and it is expected that it will increase the refinery’s crude processing capacity from 2.35 MMTPA to 2.7 MMTPA.

The STF at Madhuban is built for storage of crude oil and the separation of formation water from wet crude oil.  The STF is planned for the safe storage of 40,000 lilo litre of crude oil.

The project will also have a dehydration unit with an operating capacity of 10,000 lilo litre per day.

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The unit will provide additional storage to facilitate an increase in the production of crude oil.

The GCS at Hebeda village is a major leap towards the nation’s energy security as it will increase the nation’s crude oil production capacity by nearly 16,500 metric ton (MT) per annum.

Built at Rs 132 crore, the station comprises three low-pressure booster compressors and three high-pressure lifter compressors.