India draws up $8.7 B plan to turn urea exporter

NEW DELHI (Reuters) -- India aims to become a urea exporter by 2021 as the South Asian nation has drawn up a $8.7 B plan to revive mothballed fertilizer plants and set up gas import and pipeline facilities in eastern India.

Photo Courtesy of Reuters.

The fertilizer plants would raise annual urea production capacity by 7.5 MMt, fertilizer minister Ananth Kumar told a news conference on Thursday.

India produced 24.2 MMt of urea in 2016–2017. The country's farm sector accounts for about 15% of its $2 trillion economy and employ three-fifths of its 1.3 B people.

The country imported about 5.4 MMt of its fertilizer needs from countries including Iran, China and Iran during the last fiscal year ending in March.

"From an importing country, we will become an exporting country," said Kumar. "For food security, we need fertilizer security."

The expansion includes building a 1,590-mi pipeline, the revival of four urea plants in northern Uttar Pradesh state, eastern Jharkhand, Bihar and Odisha states, and building a liquefied gas import facility all at a cost of about 500 billion rupees, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said during the news conference.

A separate fertilizer project at Ramagundam in southern Indian would cost 55 B rupees, he added.

The fertilizer projects will get natural gas as a feedstock from Adani Group's 5 MMtpy liquefied natural import facility at Dhamra in Odisha.

"We have derisked the project... all the expansion will be on imported LNG," Pradhan said, adding the projects will be in operation by between 2020 and 2021.

Reporting by Neha Dasgupta; Writing by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Christian Schmollinger

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