The Public Sector Oil Marketing Companies, Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum has have signed the joint venture agreement to jointly set up the world’s largest refinery and petrochemical complex in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra.
Salient Highlights
Indian Oil Corp (IOC) will hold 50% stake and the Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) and Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) will each hold a stake of 25% each in the new complex.
The refinery is expected to be set up at an estimated cost of Rs 3 lakh crore.
The new complex is expected to be completed by 2022. The new complex will have a 60 million tonnes refining capacity.
The complex would come up at Babulwadi, Rajapur in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra located very close to the West coast.
Being on the West coast will be helpful in easily sourcing the crude oil from the Middle-East, Africa and South America.
The refinery complex will have three crude units of 20 million tonnes each.
The refinery will produce petrol, diesel, LPG, ATF and feedstock for making petrochemical.
The refinery complex will have an accompanying mega petrochemical plant which will include an aromatic complex, naphtha cracker and polymer complex.
Background
Although India is world’s third largest energy consumer after US and China, the per capita energy consumption in the country is one-fourth of the world average.
However, according to the International Energy Agency (EA) the domestic oil demand in the country will increase to 458 million tonnes by 2040.
Against this, the domestic refining capacity remains 230-235 million tonnes, which exceeds the demand of 194.2 million tonnes in 2016-17 fiscal.
The new refinery complex is being set up keeping in mind the future fuel demand and the export potential of the country.
At present, IOC has 11 refineries with a total capacity of 81.2 million tonnes. BPCL has 4 refineries with a total capacity of 33.4 million tonnes. HPCL has 3 refineries with a total capacity of 24.8 million tonnes.
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