Indian state, Kuwaiti firm sign deal for refinery, petchem complex

Feb. 16, 2015
The government of India’s Andhra Pradesh state has entered an agreement with Al Qebla Al Watya Inc., a subsidiary of Mohammed Abdulmohsin Al-Kharafi & Sons Co., Safat, to set up a large-scale refinery and petrochemical complex along the country’s eastern coast.

The government of India’s Andhra Pradesh state has entered an agreement with Al Qebla Al Watya Inc., a subsidiary of Mohammed Abdulmohsin Al-Kharafi & Sons Co., Safat, to set up a large-scale refinery and petrochemical complex along the country’s eastern coast.

The parties signed a memorandum of understanding for the proposed development on Feb. 13, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Sri Nara Chandrababu Naidu said in a series of posts to his Twitter account.

The MOU envisages development of both a refinery and petrochemical complex on the state’s central coast for the purpose of ensuring energy security, as well as for developing other downstream and ancillary industries, according to a separate release from the government of Andhra Pradesh.

As part of the agreement, the state government said it will extend all necessary support to help expedite the project’s development.

Details regarding either a firm timeline for the project or the potential units and capacities of the planned processing complex were not disclosed.

This latest MOU follows a previous agreement signed between the eastern coastal state’s government and Al Qebla Al Watya, which entered an MOU in 2011 to develop a 400,000-b/d refinery in Andhra Pradesh to be built in two phases in Andhra Pradesh’s proposed Petroleum, Chemicals, and Petrochemicals Investment Region in the Visag-Kakinada zone, according to a Dec. 15, 2011, release from the state government.

The first phase of the 2011 project was to have a crude processing capacity of 100,000 b/d and require an investment of about $2 billion, the state government said at the time.