In a move to cater to the masses in west and south belt of the country, all public sector oil majors - Indian Oil Corporation ltd (IOC), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation ltd (HPCl) and Bharat Petroleum Corporation ltd (BPCl) - are mulling setting up India’s biggest refinery on the west coast soon.
“We have been looking at west coast for a refinery as catering to customers in west and south was difficult with our refineries mostly in the north. HPCl has also been looking at a bigger refinery because of constraints it faces at the Mumbai unit,” said IOC Director (Refineries) Sanjiv Singh on Wednesday.
When asked about the size of the refinery, he said, “It will be bigger capacity in size than 15 million tones per annum (mtpa) which is, at present, the biggest refinery that any public sector unit has set up in one stage. IOC has recently started such capacity of 15-mtpa unit at Paradip in Odisha.”
As of now, Paradip refinery is the biggest one with a capacity of 15 mtpa and total investment to cost around Rs 34,555 crore by the Government-owned company, claiming that it would be fully operational by FY18. But sources in the know, however, said that the cost of the proposed refinery could be around over Rs 50,000 crore which would be spent in the western belt in the country for the purpose.
However, Singh revealed that the refinery being planned by the State-owned firms would be bigger in capacity than that of any refinery in India and it would cost around Rs 2,500 crore per each million tones.
When asked about the size details of the refinery, he added, “The size, investment and configuration are all under works. The refinery will also be accompanied by a petrochemical complex. Being on the west coast will provide the unit a natural advantage of easily sourcing crude oil from the Middle East and Africa,” he said, adding that the concept has gone beyond thinking stage and is now under conception.
As far as the bigger capacity of any refinery is concerned, Reliance Industries has claim to have the biggest refinery in India till now. It built its first refinery at Jamnagar in Gujarat with a capacity of 27-mtpa capacity, which was subsequently expanded to 33 mtpa later. It has also built another unit adjacent to it for exports with a capacity of 29 mtpa too.
IOC has 10 refineries in the country where main six units have a total capacity of 54.20 mtpa and also has subsidiary refineries with 11.50-mtpa capacity. “Among all the refineries owned by the public sector oil major, the 15-mtpa refinery capacity at Paradip will achieve continuous production by month end,” he said.
Meanwhile, IOC said that it would invest Rs 21,000 crore in upgrading six refineries to produce Euro-VI grade petrol and diesel by April 2020. “The investment on upgradation will raise the production cost of petrol by Rs 1.40 per litre and diesel by Rs 0.63,” Singh said.
The nation’s largest oil firm is investing Rs 7,000 crore in upgrading fuel quality from Bharat Stage-III, equivalent to Euro-III emission norm, to BS-IV by next year. “Another, Rs 13,000-14,000 crore will be invested in six units to upgrade fuel quality straight to BS-VI or Euro-VI,” he added.
In a bid to cut vehicular pollution, the Government has decided to leapfrog from Euro-IV emission standards for automobiles as well as fuel to stricter Euro-VI by April 1, 2020. All PSU refineries need to invest Rs 28,750 crore for upgrading quality of fuel they produce.