The US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) has awarded a grant to India’s state-owned Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd. (BPCL), Mumbai, to fund a feasibility study that will recommend technologies to improve both the yields and quality of fuel production at BPCL’s 12 million-tonne/year (tpy) Mumbai refinery.
Recommendations from the study, which will review options for improving bottom-of-the-barrel crude volumes to develop transportation fuels that also meet new international standards for sulfur oxides emitted from marine transport fuels, may be implemented at other Indian refineries as well, USTDA said.
US firms interested in the opportunity to conduct the USTDA-funded feasibility study are invited to submit proposals to the Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) web site following FBO’s forthcoming formal announcement of the opportunity, USTDA said.
The agency disclosed neither the value of the grant nor a timeframe for when FBO formally begin accepting proposals for the project.
Signed in advance of the US-India Energy Dialogue and the US-India Strategic and Commercial Dialogue to be held in Washington, DC, Sept. 21-22, the grant agreement comes as part of a series of commitments made by both countries in January to enhance cooperation in reducing climate change and expanding clean-energy initiatives, USTDA said.
Specifically, those commitments are to involve increased technical cooperation and discussions on how to reduce the environmental and emissions impact of heavy-duty vehicles and transportation fuels by working to adopt cleaner fuels, emissions, and efficiency standards in India, according to Jan. 25 release from the White House.
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].
