Deadline for blueprint on raising refining capacity extended

The government has given an expert group time till October-end to prepare a blueprint for raising India's refining capacity by 2040 to match a more than doubling of oil demand.
The 12-member Working Group for preparing Approach Paper for enhancing refining capacity by 2040 was constituted on June 10 last year. It was given three month time to prepare the roadmap but the deadline kept extending.
The oil ministry yesterday issued an order saying "the tenure of the Working Group has been extended till October 31, 2017."
It also said Sandeep Poundrik, Joint Secretary (Refinery) in the oil ministry, will now head the panel instead of Additional Secretary as decided earlier.

The panel has directors of refineries at Indian Oil Corp (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp (HPCL) as also representatives of private sector Reliance Industries and Essar Oil.
Managing directors of Numaligarh Refineries, Mangalore Refineries and Chennai Petroleum Corp (CPCL) are also part of the panel, the oil ministry order constituting the Group said.

India has a refining capacity of 232.066 million tonnes, which exceeded the demand of 193.74 million tonnes in 2016-17 fiscal. According to International Energy Agency (IEA), this demand is forecast to reach 458 MT by 2040.
"India is one of the fastest developing countries in the world and simultaneously, the world energy demand is expected to double in the next 30 years with energy portfolio undergoing a transition to one that includes a wide range of sources," the order said.

Expansions underway will raise the refining capacity to about 260 million tonnes by 2018.
The rise in projected demand, the order said, paves the way for gradual shift towards renewable and cleaner fuels richer in hydrogen or to neat hydrogen.
"It has been envisioned that the energy mix in 2040 could be entirely different from what it is today. Also, new capacities in petroleum refining will depend upon aggregation of demand from different petroleum derived products, which itself depends upon substitution by other forms of energy and government policies," it said.
It was felt that an approach paper for refinery capacity expansion of PSU refineries by the year 2040 needs to be prepared for meeting the growing demand of petroleum products in the country, the order said.

The Working Group would be required to "assess primary energy requirement for 2040" as also "assess likely technological developments in different energy fields", it said, adding that it would then "develop primary energy mix with breakup in terms of gas, oil, coal, nuclear, solar, hydro and biofuel".
Also, it would "assess demand for major petroleum products linking with advancements in use, substitution by other forms of energy, drive on enhancing energy efficiency and government policies".
The order said the Group can also take into account several additional issues which are reticulate and have a direct bearing on preparation of the approach paper.

"The Working Group will have a tenure of three months," it added.
India has leapfrogged from a modest 62 million tonnes per annum refining capacity in 1998 to 232 million tonnes at end of March 31, 2016.
The growth in refining capacity, which has made India a leading exporter of petroleum products since 2001-02, has been possible because of the de-licensing of petroleum refining by the government.