With crude availability coming in the way of optimal utilisation of Cauvery Basin Refinery's (CBR) capacity, Chennai Petroleum Corporation Ltd (CPCL) is evaluating various options, including relocation of a hydrotreating unit from its Manali refinery.
The one million-tonne CBR in Nagapattinam can handle only certain varieties of crude, especially those with low sulphur content. “We are considering shifting a hydrotreating unit established in 1969 at our Manali refinery.
That will help process different varieties of crude and enhance diesel production from CBR,” S. Venkataramana, Managing Director (in-charge) of CPCL, said in an interview to The Hindu .
Any improvement in the availability of crude to the second, small refinery of CPCL would help augment supplies of petroleum products in Tamil Nadu. It would also increase capacity utilisation, which, in the last fiscal, was around 65 per cent.
The demand for diesel, in particular, is witnessing a growth in excess of 20 per cent over the last few months on account of the power crisis. Apart from CPCL, which has a 10.5 million-tonne refinery at Manali, petroleum products to the State are supplied from the Kochi refinery of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and Mangalore refinery belonging to Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC).
“For CBR, we have not been able to get proper crude. We were depending on Narimanam and PY-3 [oil fields]. The yield from Narimanam is not to the desired level, and the PY-3 is not operating for sometime now due to statutory reasons,” Mr. Venkataramana said.
From 4.36 lakh tonnes in 2001-02, crude supplies from Narimanam dropped to 3.79 lakh tonnes in 2005-06 and to 2.30 lakh tonnes in 2010-11. The PY-3 crude supplies, which increased from 47,594 tonnes in 2002-03 to 2.87 lakh tonnes in 2005-06, started declining thereafter. In 2010-11, supplies dropped to 1.51 lakh tonnes.
Besides moving crude from the Manali refinery, CPCL started processing crude from KG basin. In 2010-11, CBR received 3.35 lakh tonnes of KG crude. CBR processed a total of 7.39 lakh tonnes in 2010-11, including those from a few other sources.
A few months ago, CPCL, which is a group company of Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), had written to the Petroleum Ministry seeking allocation of the entire KG crude. The standalone refinery has also decided to import crude through the MARG port in Karaikal and towards this end laid a pipeline from the port to CBR. “It will help bring 40,000 to 50,000 tonnes of crude oil. Since importing such small quantities of crude will be uneconomical, we are working out arrangements with other refineries interested in taking the remaining portion of the import parcel,” Mr. Venkataramana said.
For better evacuation of the products from CBR, plans were afoot to provide a link from the refinery to the Chennai-Tiruchi-Madurai pipeline of IOC.
