BHUBANESWAR: Chennai Petroleum Corporation Ltd (CPCL), a subsidiary of the nation’s largest oil firm Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), has planned a capital expenditure of Rs 30,000 crore to expand its refinery capacity at Narimanam to 9 million tonne per annum. At the IOC group level — IOC and group company CPCL — will be investing about Rs 37,112 crore in Tamil Nadu.
“The investments will be in pipeline expansion, construction of captive jetty, additional facilities for petrol and diesel handling, POL (petroleum, oils and lubricants) terminals at an outlay of Rs 7,112 crore in the next three years,” said R Sitharthan, executive director (Tamil Nadu and Puducherry), IOC. Besides, CPCL will be expanding its refinery capacity at Narimanam to 9 million tonne per annum at an outlay of about Rs 30,000 crore, he added.
These apart, IOC will be investing in the city gas distribution network in Coimbatore and Salem where it has won the distribution bids recently, Sitharthan said. The pipelines are being laid down at various places to carry the gas from the Ennore LNG terminal to industries and also to carry other petroleum products.
Meanwhile, IOC’s joint venture for the 5 million tonne per annum liquified natural gas (LNG) terminal at Ennore has an investment of Rs 5,151 crore and is expected to be ready by December this year.
Earlier, chairman Sanjiv Singh had mentioned that the company plans to invest Rs 1.75 lakh crore to nearly double refinery capacity, boost petrochemical production, expand gas business and lay new pipelines to become a vertically integrated company. As part of this, projects costing Rs 32,000 crore are in various stages of execution and plans are underway for implementing more projects costing about Rs 1.43 lakh crore, he said.
Currently, IOC is investing Rs 15,600 crore in expansion of petrochemical projects and another Rs 74,600 crore in raising the capacity of its existing refineries. The investment cycle also includes Rs 16,628 crore in upgrading refineries to produce Euro-VI emission norm-compliant petrol and diesel by 2020.
A further Rs 36,500 crore worth of projects are in the pipeline, but have not been approved by the company board as yet. These include expansion of its newest refinery at Paradip in Odisha to 18 million tonne from current 15 million tonne as also the expansion of its Bongaigaon unit.