State-owned Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) has picked Andhra Pradesh for setting up a new oil refinery-cum-petrochemical complex, which may be the last greenfield project in India which has detailed a very ambitious energy transition plan to net zero emissions.

In a stock exchange filing, BPCL said its board at a meeting on Tuesday "accorded its approval to commence pre project activities for setting up of a greenfield refinery cum petrochemical complex in east coast at Andhra Pradesh at an estimated cost of Rs 6,100 crore".

The pre-project activities include initial studies, land identification, and acquisition, preparation of detailed feasibility report, environment impact assessment, basic design engineering package, and front-end engineering design, it said.

While the firm did not reveal the capacity or the timelines for completing the project, the refinery could be at least 9 million tonnes (180,000 barrels per day) capacity.

BPCL is India's third largest oil refiner behind state-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and Reliance Industries Ltd. It currently owns refineries at Mumbai (12 million tonnes a year capacity), Kochi in Kerala (15.5 million tonnes) and Bina in Madhya Pradesh (7.8 million tonnes). It had lost a fourth oil refinery to Oil India Ltd in the aborted privatisation plan.

BPCL had to give up its Numaligarh refinery in Assam to Oil India Ltd when the government was attempting to privatise the company. The transfer was to keep the Numaligarh unit within the public sector to honour the Assam Accord. But BPCL privatisation was aborted due to lack of interest by bidders.

The planned unit in Andhra Pradesh is being touted as India's last greenfield refinery project. BPCL is part of a consortium that is pursuing a 60 million tonnes a year refinery-cum-petrochemical complex on west coast in Maharashtra that was conceived six years back but is yet to get off the drawing board due to land acquisition woes.