MUMBAI : Divestment-bound national oil marketer Bharat Petroleum Corporation has resumed work on as many as 2,118 projects involving a capital expenditure (capex) of around ₹50,300 crore over three years. Of the total estimated capital investment, ₹9,597 crore is targeted for the current fiscal, of which it has already spent ₹1,650 crore, the second largest oil marketing company said on Wednesday.
The company had last month said it would cut down on its ₹12,500 crore capex plan announced earlier this year due to the lockdowns and would spend only ₹8,000 crore. The new announcement increases the capex for the current fiscal by almost ₹1,600 crore.
The company plans to complete 10 projects worth ₹18,766 crore (both capex and operational expenditure) in this fiscal and the biggest two of them are in Kochi. The two projects are ₹5,246-crore propylene derivative petrochemical project (PDPP) in Kochi and the ₹3,289-crore motor spirit block project (MSBP) at the Kochi Refinery, which is its largest refinery with 15 million tonne capacity.
Both these projects were stalled since April due to the lockdowns which also stopped international flights making it impossible for the highly skilled foreign manpower to reach the country, the company had said earlier this month. The BPCL spokesman told PTI on Wednesday that the new capex plan of ₹50,300 crore is earmarked for the next three years and all the projects barring the ₹3,972-crore city gas distribution network in Ahmednagar and Aurangabad districts of Maharashtra will be completed over the next three years.
Another large project is the ₹1,607-crore 2G bio-ethanol refinery at Bargarh in Odisha. The company is also working on the ₹1,524-crore multi-product cross-country petroleum product pipeline from Bina to Panki in Kanpur. Then there is the ₹1,507-crore Kochi-Salem LPG pipeline project where the work has resumed.
Two of these projects are in Mumbai--the ₹640-crore expansion of the lube oil base stock (LOBS) and a ₹449-crore re-routing of Mumbai-Manmad pipeline and ₹283-crore petroleum terminal at Haveli in Pune and a ₹249-core new petroleum depot at Bokaro in Jharkhand. "We have turned the COVID-19 driven crisis into an opportunity and are working on mission mode now to generate employment and revive growth.
The 2,118 projects include refinery projects, petrochemicals, bio refineries, marketing infrastructure, pipelines, CGD among others," the company said, adding as of August 15, it has spent ₹380 crore in labour wages alone. BPCL has an employment oriented operating expenses (opex) of around ₹6,900 crore for the current fiscal, of which ₹2,100 crore has already been spent. The company's capex and opex is around ₹16,500 crore for this fiscal which has the potential to generate around 4.48 crore man-days of which around 1.34 crore man-days have already been generated as of August 15.
This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text.
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