To meet the growing fuel demand in the country that is expected to be in the vicinity of 50 million tonnes by 2020, state-owned Hindustan Petroleum Corpn Ltd (HPCL) will revive its `50,000 crore stalled refinery-cum-petrochemicals project near Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh.
The 15-million tonne a year refinery and a mega petrochem plant is being built about 70 km away from the company’s existing Vizag refinery, HPCL Chairman and Managing Director S Roy Choudhury told reporters here on Wednesday. The company is looking for 3,000 acres of land in Andhra Pradesh to set up the proposed project.
The oil marketing company has asked energy giants including Total SA of France and British petroleum major BP Plc to join in to revive the stalled petrochemical project, Roy Choudhury said.
“Gas firm GAIL India has expressed interest in the petrochemical plant, while for the refinery we have written to 13-14 global majors for participation,” he said.
Earlier in 2009, a consortium led by HPCL, which also included steel billionaire LN Mittal’s Group, Total of France, state-owned Oil India and GAIL, had in 2009 put the project on hold as petrochemical demand then was seen as too weak to justify the investment.
HPCL has also approached Oil India Limited, Indian Oil Corp (IOC) and ONGC to join the venture as partners.
“We estimate that our petroleum product sale would be 50 million tonnes in 2020 while our refining capacity would be around 42 million tonnes,” he said.
HPCL already owns a 6.5 million tonnes refinery at Mumbai and a 8.3 million tonne unit at Vizag. While the Vizag plant is being expanded to 15 million tonnes HPCL is also setting up a 9 million tonnes refinery at Barmer in Rajasthan at an estimated cost of `37, 320 crore.
It had in 2007-08 planned the only-for-exports refinery to target demand in South East Asia and the Middle East.
The five-way alliance of HPCL, oil explorer OIL, gas utility firm GAIL India and Mittal Investment SARL and Total had in October 2007 signed a MoU to look at the feasibility of setting up the Vizag project.
Total did pre-feasibility for the refinery project and demand studies while GAIL was mandated to study the petrochemical unit. But the project was in 2010 put on hold before equity structure could be decided.
The chairman said the project will depend upon availability of land for which the company has approached the Andhra Pradesh government.