The first petrochemical company of India was:

NOCIL was set up in 1961 as India's first petrochemical company. It was established by the Mafatlal Group in collaboration with Shell (Royal Dutch Shell). Its plant was set up at Thane-Belapur, near Mumbai (Bombay), and began production in the late 1960s. It was India's first naphtha cracker-based petrochemical complex, producing chemicals such as ethylene and other basic petrochemicals. Today, NOCIL is known mainly as a maker of rubber chemicals.

What are petrochemicals?

Petrochemicals are chemicals obtained from petroleum (crude oil) and natural gas. The main raw materials are naphtha and natural gas.

In a "cracker" plant, these are broken down ("cracked") into basic chemicals such as ethylene, propylene, butadiene, benzene, toluene and xylene.

These basic chemicals are used to make plastics (polyethylene, PVC, polypropylene), synthetic fibres (polyester, nylon, acrylic), synthetic rubber, detergents, paints, fertilisers and medicines.

Milestones of India's petrochemical industry:

• 1961: NOCIL is set up (Thane).
• 1969: Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Limited (IPCL) is set up by the government at Vadodara (Gujarat); it was later bought by Reliance Industries (2002) and merged with it (2007).
• Later, large complexes came up at Nagothane and Gandhar, Haldia (West Bengal) and Panipat.
• Reliance Industries' Jamnagar complex in Gujarat has the world's largest single-site oil refinery complex.
• The Central Institute of Petrochemicals Engineering and Technology (CIPET), set up in 1968 in Chennai, trains people for the industry.

Why not the other options?

• ✗IPCL was set up in 1969 at Vadodara, after NOCIL.
• ✗Reliance Industries entered petrochemicals later and now runs the world's largest refinery complex at Jamnagar.
• ✗Haldia Petrochemicals in West Bengal began in 2000.