Gujarat Refinery to invest Rs 24k cr on projects till 2022

Indian Oil-owned Gujarat Refinery on the outskirts of Vadodara city will invest about Rs 24,174 crore on new projects and expansions in the next five years, a senior company official said today. These include capacity expansion to 18 MMTPA, at a cost of Rs 15,034 crore, oxo-alcohol petrochemical project (Rs 4,157 crore), Linear Alkyl Benzamine (LAB) revamp project (Rs 288 crore), BS-IV (Rs 1,315 crore) and BS-VI (Rs 3,380 crore), Gujarat Refinery executive director, Sudhir Kumar told reporters here. According to him, these will generate direct employment of about 200 persons and indirect employment to about 10,000 people at the peak phase of project executions. "Alongside improving the refinerys energy performance as well as its ability to meet growing regional demand for finished products, the expansion and reconfiguration project also aims to equip the plant with greater flexibility to weather future disruptions in the supply-demand scenario and more closely integrate its production with downstream petrochemical units," he said. The company is moving forward with the first phase of a long-planned project to expand crude oil processing capacity of its 13.7 million-tonne per year (TPY) Koyali refinery at Vadodara. "It is already approved by the companys board in August, and the Rs 15,034-crore expansion will increase the refinery's total processing capacity by 4.3 million TPY to 18 million TPY by year-end 2022," he said. Further, the company has already deposited an amount of Rs 100 crore with the Gujarat government about15 days ago for acquisition of 85 acres of land from the surrounding villages around its refinery, required for two of the new projects, he added. Scheduled to be commissioned between September 2019 and April 2020, the two BS-IV and BS-VI projects are designed to bring the refinery's fuel production in line with the governments decision to leapfrog to BS 6 compliance by April, 2020. The refinery is also the second-largest manufacturer of Linear Alkyl Benzene (LAB) in the country, exporting to over 20 countries.

The unit has a production capacity of 120 TMPTA of LAB. Considering the global and domestic supply and demand scenario, Indian Oil (IOC) board has approved the 35 per cent capacity revamp of LAB from existing 120 TMPTA to 162 TMPTA at an estimated project cost of Rs 288 crore. IOC is also entering Butyl Acrylate petrochemical speciality product market which has significant growth potential in India. The IOC board has approved the oxo-alcohol project to produce Butyl Acrylate as a final product which has a lucrative internal rate of return (IRR) of 17.9 per cent at an approved cost of Rs 4,157 crore.

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