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| Chennai Petro plans Rs 7,000-cr expansion |
| T E Narasimhan / Chennai Jul 06, 2009, 00:36 IST |
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Chennai Petroleum Corporation Ltd, (CPCL), a subsidiary of IndianOil Corporation (IOC), is planning to invest over Rs 7,000 crore in the next five years on its expansion plan and on connectivity projects.
It is also planning to acquire 400 acres at the outskirts of Chennai as part of its refinery expansion.
Speaking to Business Standard at the inauguration of CPCL’s Seawater Desalination Plant and IOC’s Aviation Turbine Fuel Pipeline on Saturday at Manali, near Chennai, CPCL’s Managing Director K K Acharya said they had lined up projects worth around Rs 7,300 crore.
These include a Rs 3,500 crore residue upgrade scheme. The high-conversion residue upgradation unit would increase the distillate yield of the refinery and reduce production of low-value fuel oil.
Another major investment is to set up a 1.5 mt diesel hydro treating unit and a naphtha hydro treating unit and an isomerisation unit of 150,000 tonnes to meet the Euro IV standards of diesel and petrol use.
CPCL is investing Rs 2,600 crore in this project, which is expected to be completed by end of 2009, he added.
The Corporation is also investing Rs 470 crore for raising its Manali refinery’s capacity by one million tonnes.
The refinery can now process 9.5 million tonnes of crude. The project is scheduled to complete by the end of this year.
It will also invest another Rs 800 crore for single buoy mooring (SBM) at Ennore port.
A very large crude carrier with a capacity of 260,000 tonnes can come and discharge its cargo at the SBM, while the crude can be piped to Ennore and stored there.
Another pipeline will take the crude to the refinery. The facility will be ready in the next four years.
The Rs 244-crore desalination plant’s inauguration makes CPCL self-sufficient on water requirements.
The plant is a reverse osmosis-based one, with a capacity of 5.8 million gallons per day (MGD). CPCL procures around 30 million litres of water a day from Chennai Metro Water at 6.1 paise a litre; the cost will now come down to 3.5 paise a litre, said S Chandrasekaran, director–technical.
More than the cost, self-sufficiency is the key. He noted in the year 2000, when the state was facing a severe water shortage, CPCL’s unit was forced to shut down due to non-availability of water for its refinery which lost the company Rs 70 crore.
He noted the 30 million litres of water procured by CPCL from Metro Water, will be now available for the public.
An aviation turbine fuel pipeline of Indian Oil Corporation was inaugurated on the same day by Praful Patel, Union civil aviation minister. The 95 km pipeline which will connect Manali Refinery with Chennai Airport was built for Rs 50 crore.
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