New Delhi, Aug. 17: The 16-day shutdown of Numaligarh Refinery Ltd (NRL), due to the floods that ravaged Assam, is expected to erode the company’s bottomline by around Rs 30 crore.

Petroleum ministry sources disclose that during the period of the forced shutdown, the refinery would have processed around 90,000 tonnes of crude oil in the normal course. This gap is not likely to be covered up during the current fiscal.

Construction work on the project being set up to convert naphtha into petrol and LPG has been adversely hit as several skilled workers have not been reporting for work due to the floods. The supply of various building materials that have to move by road and rail has also been disrupted leading to a slowdown of the project. However, work on the project is expected to be speeded up now in order to meet the original deadline.

NRL is reported to have resumed operations from August 7 and is being provided by two to three rakes everyday by the railways to evacuate its products. The shortage of rakes has been continuously plaguing NRL and prevents it from performing in full capacity even though adequate crude is being supplied from the eastern offshore oilfields to bridge the deficit in Assam.

The refinery had been shut down on July 21 since the storage tanks of the refinery were full to the brim. No product evacuation was taking place as the floods had brought rail movement to a complete halt. About 80 per cent of NRL’s output is transported outside the northeast region.

The refinery is dependent on its parent, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL), for marketing of its products. Most of the retail outlets in the northeast region are owned by Indian Oil Corporation, which prefers to lift products from its own refineries.

BPCL has to bring the NRL products for sale to the north and eastern parts of the country where it has a strong retail network. However, the railways do not supply an adequate number of wagons, which often leads to slowing down of operations.