Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd clarifies on shutdown

The Exchange had sought clarification from Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd with respect to news appearing in Business Line on September 11, 2015 titled "Power failure leads to auto shutdown in MRPL phase III."

Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd has issued a press release in this regard.

Yesterday post 10pm there were a series of reports in certain sections of the media about an explosion, fire and casualties in MRPL Phase III.

Though a clarification was issued immediately, some TV reports based on wrong information spread through social media by miscreants, created widespread panic.

WE at MRPL would like to assure the people of Mangalore and the media that our safety systems are of the highest standards and these will protect you/us and prevent the kind of disastrous situations that was being wrongly reported yesterday.

Here are the facts before you in detail :

- Post 9 pm yesterday night the Captive Power Plant of Phase III, (CPP III) tripped resulting in a black out in Phase III.

- In CPP III a power generating steam turbinehad failed and the other 2 Gas turbines though designed to take the entire load of the failed turbine, tripped, resulting in power failure.

- When a power failure cannot be prevented the next step is to initiate safe shut down. Phase III being state of the art safe shutdown starts automatically. Our Phase II and Phase I also are equipped with this safety procedure.

- Yesterday too, Phase 3 process units went into safe shut down mode automatically and all safety systems functioned as per design intentions.

- Part of the safety feature during shutdown is to route the hydrocarbon vapours to the flare system, enabling safe shut down of the process units. The hydrocarbon vapours (Such as LPG, Naphtha / Petrol, Diesel etc) are burnt in the flare and hence during a black out situation the flare will be burning with a tall flame. This is a standard safety procedure.

There were no fire or explosion or any untoward incident, even a minor injury, in any part of the refinery complex, including the Phase 3 Units.

By midnight the CPP III was almost normalised. Also the re- start up activities of the Phase 3Units were commenced immediately. One by One units of Phase III are starting up, as per procedure.

MRPL Phase I, and II were and are running normally.

In response to the wide-spread panic created amongst the public, KSPCB officials and Police representatives visited MRPL Phase III and Refinery complex and confirmed the truth of the matter.

MRPL management is mulling legal action against spreading canards.

Shares of MANGALORE REFINERY & PETROCHEMICALS LTD. was last trading in BSE at Rs.51.75 as compared to the previous close of Rs. 53.1. The total number of shares traded during the day was 203554 in over 1558 trades.

The stock hit an intraday high of Rs. 53.7 and intraday low of 51.5. The net turnover during the day was Rs. 10644923.

Source : Equity Bulls

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