The Hindu : New Delhi News : Expansion plans for IOC’s Panipat refinery

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Monday, Sep 15, 2008
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Expansion plans for IOC’s Panipat refinery

Sujay Mehdudia

Capacity to be increased to 15 million tonnes by Nov. 2009

Project aims to utilise surplus Naphtha available
Up gradation on
at Gujarat
refinery also

Panipat: Country’s leading petro-giant Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) has drawn up a major expansion plan for its Panipat refinery to increase its capacity from 12 million tonnes to 15 million tones per annum by November 2009 at an estimated cost of around Rs.14,000 crore.

IOC Director (Refineries) B.N. Bankapur said Naphtha Cracker and downstream polymer units were being installed at Panipat, making this complex an integrated Refinery-cum-Petrochemicals Complex.

This project aims to utilise the surplus Naphtha available from Indian Oil. This complex, along with the PX-PTA units, will have synergistic impact in the growth of downstream industries for the production of Polyester Staple Fibre (PSF), Polyester Filament Yarn (PFY) and Textiles.

Based on the above raw material availability, there will be steady growth of related industries in this region. Mr. Bankapur said the Naphtha Cracker project here had achieved 78 per cent overall progress against the schedule of 77 per cent in about two years and termed it a good achievement.

The refinery’s additional expansion project (P-15) was in progress and was targeted to be completed by December 2009.

This would ensure better supply of petroleum products to the strategic north-west region of the country, he said.

The refinery was the most technically advanced public sector refinery in the country and met the demand of petroleum products not only in Haryana but also in the entire North-West Region including Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal, Chandigarh, Uttarakhand and parts of Rajasthan and Delhi.

Talking about other major ongoing projects, he said in order to ensure meeting product quality requirement of MS/HSD to EURO-III/IV levels, and to process increased quantity of high sulphur crude and improvement in distillate yield, IOC was implementing a up gradation project at Gujarat Refinery at a cost of Rs.5,882 crore, which was scheduled for completion in January 2010.

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