BPCL lines up Rs 18,000 crore for refinery expansion

State-run Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) is set to invest at least Rs 18,000 crore on expansion of its refineries in the next five years, in order to add another 19 million tonne (mt) refining capacity.

This will be part of the company’s overall road map to spend Rs 1.08 lakh crore till 2021-22. “Including our subsidiaries, our refining capacity is somewhere about 31 mt, we are planning to move closer to 50 mt by somewhere around 2022. This will see an investment of approximately about Rs 18,000 crore,” D Rajkumar, chairman and managing director of BPCL, told Business Standard.

As part of the expansion, the company is planning to have at least 15 mt capacity in each of its refineries, including Mumbai, Kochi and Bina (Madhya Pradesh). It also plans to expand capacity of the Numaligarh refinery in Assam from 3 mt to 9 mt per annum.

“The Rs 1.08-lakh-crore investment that we have lined up for the next five years include the expansion of our refineries, marketing sector and also our upstream presence,” Rajkumar said. The company also has retail expansion plans of adding more than 1,000 outlets a year.

BPCL is the third-largest crude refiner and marketer of petroleum products in India. While it has more refining capacity than its close competitor Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL), its retail outlets are lesser than it. 

Of the total 59,595 fuel retail outlets in India, Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), HPCL and BPCL run more than 54,000. Of this, the share of BPCL comes to about 14,000.