Mangalore refinery reports steady operations following expansion

Feb. 13, 2015
Operations are proceeding smoothly at Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals Ltd.’s (MRPL) refinery in Mangalore, India, following the recent completion of a modernization project designed to increase the capacity and flexibility of crude oil processing at the plant

Operations are proceeding smoothly at Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals Ltd.’s (MRPL) refinery in Mangalore, India, following the recent completion of a modernization project designed to increase the capacity and flexibility of crude oil processing at the plant (OGJ Online, June 8, 2010).

With the third phase of the refinery’s expansion and upgrade project now completed, units are running consistently on a sustained basis, while crude throughputs, distillate yields, and energy consumption continues to stabilize, according to H. Kumar, the refinery’s managing director.

Additionally, with all secondary units now fully operational, the refinery is in the process of maximizing crude throughputs in order to attain higher margins, Kumar said in a Feb. 13 filing to India’s BSE Ltd. (formerly Bombay Stock Exchange).

MRPL, a subsidiary of Oil & Natural Gas Corp. Ltd., wrapped the long-delayed Phase 3 expansion and upgrading project in late 2014 after it completed start-up of the third train of a three-train sulfur recovery unit, a raw water treatment system, LPG mounded bullet storage tanks, and other related offsite facilities (OGJ Online, Nov. 13, 2014).

The Phase 3 expansion, which boosted the refinery’s crude processing capacity to 15 million tonnes/year, also included the following units:

• A 2.2 million-tpy fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) unit (OGJ Online, Aug. 27, 2014).

• A 650,000-tpy coker heavy gas oil hydrotreating unit (OGJ Online, May 15, 2014).

• A 3 million-tpy delayed coking unit (OGJ Online, Apr. 4, 2014).

Separately, an integrated 440,000-tpy polypropylene unit, which will use the Mangalore refinery’s FCC production of LPG, light distillates, and propylene as feedstock, is scheduled to be commissioned by the end of February, MRPL said in its Feb. 13 filing.

A firm timeframe for when crude throughputs at Mangalore might reach the refinery’s fully expanded processing capacity was not disclosed.