Kuthalam (TN) (PTI): India on Sunday joined the ranks of select group of countries having the expertise to extract helium from natural gas with the ONGC setting up a pilot plant for the purpose here.

Dedicating the plant to the nation, ONGC's chairman R S Sharma said it was yet another feather in the cap of the public sector oil company as the landmark achievement coincided with the World Technology Day.

"It's only a pilot project to demonstrate extraction of Helium from Natural Gas. Today we have demonstrated the difficult part of the whole business, replicating of which cannot be more difficult in future," he said.

The Rs six crore plant is a joint effort of the ONGC and Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, apart from the Department of Atomic Energy and the Department of Science and Technology, he said.

"The plant is a significant step towards assimilating new technology to make the country self-reliant on the rare and precious gas," Sharma said.

The plant was designed, manufactured and installed by the Adsorption Research Incorporated, (ARC) USA. In this plant, pure Helium is being extracted from Natural Gas by using a four-stage pressure swing adsorption technique for the first time in India.

Sharma said most of the fields producing gas in India were "in geologically younger formation, with the tertiary age younger than 60 million years, and has little or no Helium."