With Telangana becoming the 29th State of the country on June 2 after having been carved out of Andhra Pradesh, the Centre now has an onerous task of establishing key infrastructural assets in both the States as part of a balancing act so that the entire region does not suffer owing to division in resources.
According to official sources, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation ltd (HPCl) has been asked to look at the possibility of setting up a Greenfield oil refinery and petrochemical complex in Andhra Pradesh. Similarly State-owned Steel Authority of India ltd (SAIl) has been asked to examine the feasibility of establishing an integrated steel plant in Khammam district of Telangana.
Telangana could also get a 4,000 MW capacity power plant, as the Power Ministry has directed NTPC to explore the possibility there.
Sources added that the key infra ministries like Petroleum, Power as well as Steel are examining these possibilities of setting up facilities in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh (which now consists of Rayalseema and Coastal Andhra regions), as part of the Centre’s efforts to retain the significance of the overall Andhra-Telangana region in terms of having basic necessities in comparison with other parts of the country.
Petroleum Ministry sources told The Pioneer that HPCl has been asked to examine the possibility of setting of setting up a refinery-cum-petrochemical complex somewhere in coastal Andhra Pradesh as it makes economic sense to have such kind of a set up near the sea.
“Since crude has to be sourced to refineries, it always sensible to set up such facilities near the sea so that transportation of crude oil does not require much capital, so the proposed refinery in Andhra Pradesh, could come up in Coastal Andhra region,” a source privy to the development said.
Currently there are 18 oil refineries in the country, out of which Andhra Pradesh has two – ONGC’s Tatipaka refinery situated in East Godavari district of the state and HPCl’s Visakhapatnam refinery.
Though the exact location of the proposed refinery is not yet known, it could come up in the same region as the above mentioned ones, sources said.
The new State of Telangana is likely to get a power plant, though the location for it is yet to be established. The Power Ministry is studying the feasibility of setting up the unit in the State and the location is being earmarked, sources said.
As of now there are four coal-based thermal power plants in Telangana which are operated by APGENCO (Andhra Pradesh Power Generation Company) while one is operated by NTPC. It is not yet clear if the APGENCO-owned thermal plants will be transferred to a new power generation company to be managed by Telangana Government.
Similarly SAIl is examining the feasibility of establishing an integrated steel plant in Khammam district of Telangana.
Once it comes up, this would be the first steel plant in the new state, as out of the total 13 integrated steel plants situated in the country, only one – managed by Rashtriya Ispat Nigam ltd in Visakhapatnam – was located in unified Andhra Pradesh.