Despite the company's best efforts, the availability of gas as feedstock for RCF is getting reduced day by day, RCF chairman and managing director DK Varma said.

"About 30-40 per cent of the Trombay unit has been closed due to reduction in gas supply from GAIL. Among the two ammonia plants in Trombay, today we have stopped Ammmonia I unit with the production capacity of 350 tonne per day."

RCF recently invested close to Rs 100 crore to revamp this unit. Another ammonia plant is running at reduced load of around 50-60 per cent capacity, Mr Varma informed. Three to four intermediate chemical plants have also been closed down.

"Tomorrow (Thursday ) we will be shutting down the Suphala plant, which produces NPK 15:15:15, and was working at 70 per cent capacity. The production of urea has also been reduced. Thus, we have to close our unit one by one and hand over a notice of closure to the government giving retrenchment notice to the employees. This is because of the indifferent supply of feedstock by GAIL and ONGC to RCF," Mr Varma said.

According to the agreement with GAIL, the quantity of gas for Trombay unit is around 1.8 million cubic meter per day. The government had earlier agreed that GAIL would be supplying around 1.6 million standard cubic meter per day to RCF's Trombay unit. This has been reduced to around 1.2 million standard cubic meter per day in the last three days - which is very negligible to run the unit," he said.

According to Mr Varma, "Due to short supply of gas from GAIL, I am forseeing immediate closure of 50-60 per cent of the plant and about 2,000 direct or indirect workmen will not have any job."

Further, the plants are not equipped to use naphtha as alternate feedstock. RCF's production of urea at Trombay is around 1,200 tonne per day - which is being cut down the production to 400-500 tonne per day.