State-owned Indian Oil Corp. Ltd. (IOC) has reached final investment decision on its previously announced proposal to increase oil processing capacity at the company’s 6 million-tonne/year Barauni refinery in Begusarai District, Bihar (OGJ Online, Aug. 11, 2015).
At a Sept. 29 meeting, the company’s board approved an investment of 82.87 billion rupees for a project that includes expanding crude processing capacity to 9 million tpy and adding a downstream polypropylene unit at the Barauni refinery, IOC said in a Sept. 30 filing to the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. and BSE Ltd. (formerly Bombay Stock Exchange).
The board also approved a separate investment of 15.27 billion rupees at the Sept. 29 meeting for projects at the company’s 15 million-tpy Panipat refinery and petrochemical complex in Haryana north of New Delhi.
Alongside ongoing implementation of an olefin-recovery project, the Panipat investment will cover an expansion of the complex’s existing naphtha cracker, a revamp of the monoethylene glycol (MEG) plant, and modifications to a benzene expansion unit, the company said.
Timelines
Upon first announcing the project in 2015, IOC said it will execute the Barauni expansion project in two phases.
A detailed configuration study and technoeconomic evaluation for Phase 1 of the expansion—which will boost capacity by 1 million tpy to 7 million tpy—remain under way, with the project scheduled for execution in 2016-17, India’s Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MPNG) said in a July operational update.
Phase 2, which will add the remaining capacity increase of 2 million tpy, is due to be completed by 2020-21, MPNG said.
A final timeline for the Panipat olefin-recovery project has yet to be disclosed, but implementation, which began in 2015, remains ongoing, IOC said in its latest annual report.
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].
