Dharmendra Pradhan to vet progress of PCPIR hub, IOCL refinery

May announce new industrial park for Odisha

Union minister of state for petroleum & natural gas, Dharmendra Pradhan will take stock of big ticket investment projects in petroleum sector in Odisha during his interaction with chief minister Naveen Patnaik scheduled on Friday.

The PCPIR (petroleum, chemicals & petrochemicals investment region) hub in the state and the 15 million tonne oil refinery by Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL) at Paradeep are the projects likely to dominate the agenda of talks. IOCL chairman B Ashok and GAIL (India) Ltd chairman B C Tripathi are also slated to attend the review meeting.

The review holds significance since the ministerial stint of Pradhan, who hails from Odisha, is expected to give a fillip to projects across petroleum and natural gas sectors.

Pradhan had recently announced an investment of Rs 4,500 crore for Odisha for establishment of new depots for petroleum products and LPG terminals. The minister had also declared three new product pipelines - Paradeep-Ranchi, Paradeep-Durgapur and Paradeep-Raipur to carry petroleum products to different parts of the state.

The central minister is likely to announce a new logistics and industrial corridor for Odisha. He had suggested establishment of the park around Deogarh, preferably beside the Talcher-Bimalagarh railway line and NH-6 on around 10,000 acres of land. The logistics and industrial park would be mostly utilised for storage of coal with washing facility on its way from the coal blocks in Talcher to other industrial areas.

The state’s nodal agency for land acquisition Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (Idco) has recently asked the Deogarh collector to identify contiguous non-forest government land for the proposed project.

Meanwhile, the oil refinery by IOCL, that has faced many hurdles, is set to start commercial production by the end of this year. Pradhan had identified the IOCL refinery as an important project, crucial to the state’s economy and also for job creation.

The Phailin cyclone that struck the state in October last year, had delayed the project due to shifting of workforce to safe locations. Also, due to currency fluctuations, the project cost had escalated to Rs 37,000 crore from Rs 30,000 crore estimated originally.

IOCL’s oil refinery holds the key to development of the PCPIR (petroleum, chemicals & petrochemicals investment region) hub planned across 284 sq km in Kendrapara and Jagatsinghpur districts.

The refinery and the petrochemical complex to come up later, will be part of the projects in the PCPIR hub that is expected to attract investments to the tune of Rs 2.74 lakh crore.

Of the expected overall investment figure of Rs 2.74 lakh crore, the lion’s share of Rs 2.3 lakh crore would come from the petroleum and petrochemicals sectors followed by housing and allied infrastructure at Rs 23,500 crore, external infrastructure at Rs 13,634 crore and Rs 3,500 crore each for chemicals & fertilizers and ancillary sectors.

In the natural gas sector, IOCL has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Dhamra Port Company Ltd (DPCL) to set up a five million tonne per annum (mtpa) LNG (liquefied natural gas) terminal within the port premises at a cost of Rs 5,000 crore.

Similarly, GAIL (India) Ltd has proposed an offshore LNG terminal at Paradeep port estimated to cost Rs 3,108 crore. The terminal would have a a capacity of 4.8 mtpa.