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Indian state picks new site for country’s largest refinery project
PROJECTS & COMPANIES
INDIA’S Maharashtra State government has identi ed a new location for what will be the country’s largest single site re nery.
The selection comes hot on the heels of reports that repeated delays in acquiring the land had prompted the development consortium to consider moving the $44bn re nery project to another state.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fad- navis told state lawmakers on June 20 that the new site would be located in the Raigad district, about 100 km south of state capital Mumbai City. Fadnavis added that state-run City and Indus- trial Development would acquire land from 40 villages for the re nery.
State-run Indian Oil Corp. (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and Hin- dustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) own 50% of the project, while Saudi Aramco and Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC) hold the other half.
In April 2018, Aramco agreed to buy 50% of the project, which will include a 1.2 million barrel per day (b/d) re nery and 18m tonne per year (t/y) integrated petrochemical plant. In June 2018, the Saudi oil giant and ADNOC agreed to jointly invest in the project.
Raigad is the second proposed location for the re nery, a er the rst in Nanar village in Ratnagiri district was o cially dropped in March owing to local farmers’ protests. e land acquisition process had been suspended in November 2018. e pro- ject has been delayed for two years over land issues,
leading to reports earlier in June that its develop- ers were losing patience. On June 12, e Hindu quoted unnamed industry sources as saying that the consortium might move to Gujarat State if the Maharashtra government was unable to secure the necessary land by August.
Gujarat is already home to the country’s larg- est re nery, which is run by Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), as well as facilities belonging to Nayara Energy and IOC.
“Going by the present timetable, the first phase will be commissioned by 2025. Delaying this further is just not worth anyone’s while,” the daily quoted one source as saying. e rst phase will build 800,000 b/d of capacity, while a second phase will add 400,000 b/d.™
IOC unveils planned upgrades to West Bengal downstream
FINANCE & INVESTMENT
STATE-RUN re ning major Indian Oil Corp. (IOC) intends to invest 13bn rupees ($187.4 million) over the next two years in upgrading its downstream network in West Bengal State.
The company said it would invest more than 5 billion rupees in upgrading its Haldia re nery to produce Bharat Stage-VI (BS VI) compliant fuel, which is equivalent to Euro 6 emissions standards. e company will also invest in a new diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) manufacturing plant, retail fuel stations across the state, ethanol tankers and a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) bottling plant.
IOC executive director Pritish Bharat said the company would sell only BS VI-compliant gasoline and diesel at its retail fuel network in the state from April 1, 2020. The sulphur content in BS VI gasoline amounts to 10 parts per million (PPM) com- pared with 50PPM in BS-IV.
“First BS-VI fuel supply has already been made from IOC’s Mathura [re nery],” Express News Service quoted the executive as saying.
Bharat added that IOC had developed a diesel emission additive that would make diesel engines BS-VI compliant and that the
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 25 26•June•2019