Essar Oil commisions Hydrogen mfg unit, 6 more by March

Essar Oil, a subsidiary of Essar Energy, today announced the commissioning of the Hydrogen Manufacturing Unit (HMU), the third new unit as part of the Phase 1 expansion at its Vadinar Refinery, the company said in a release filed with the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).

The company said that it will commssion six additional unitsby March, 2012, thus completing a Rs 8,310-crore expansion project to increase the refinery's capacity to 375,000 barrels per day (bpd) i.e. 18 million metric tonne per annum (mmtpa) from 300,000 bpd or 14 mmtpa.

It plans to enhance its complexity almost two-fold from 6.1 at present to 11.8.

An optimisation project is also under execution to increase the plant capacity to 405,000 bpd (20 mmtpa) by September 2012.

Lalit Gupta, MD and CEO, Essar Oil said: "The successive commissioning of two units -- Amine Regeneration Unit and HMU -- within a week from each other has made it possible for us to adhere to our project timelines."

HMU helps produce 99.9% pure hydrogen gas to the Diesel Hydrotreater and Vaccum Gas Oil Hydrotreater units for hydrotreating process.

The shares of the company ended trading up 1.94% at Rs 63.05 apiece on the BSE which ended up 0.73% at 16,154 at day's close.