HPCL likely to drop greenfield refinery proposal, proceed with petrochemical complex

02-Jul-15

Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd might drop Greenfield refinery proposed near Visakhapatnam and instead firm up joint venture partners for a standalone petrochemical complex by seeking land and tax concessions on a fast-track mode, as per The Hindu. A suggestion to this effect was made by Union Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan at a review meeting held by him and Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu with top officials on exploration of oil and gas reserves in Krishna-Godavari basin last week. Though the project involving an investment of over Rs.40,000 crore for establishing a 15 million ton refinery-cum-petrochemical complex was conceived a decade ago, it hit a roadblock for want of equity partners. The first setback it received was in 2008-09 following backing out of Mittal Energy and TOTAL of France from the consortium as fallout of global meltdown. This was followed by cancellation of 1500 acres allotted for the project at Atchutapuram by AP Industrial Infrastructure Corporation in 2012 for ‘inordinate delay’ in grounding the project. The site was allotted in 2007. Though HPCL has completed techno-economic feasibility study to revive the project by involving GAIL and other prospective partners sometime ago, APIIC officials told The Hindu on Wednesday that they were neither aware of the dropping of Greenfield refinery project nor the talk of not going ahead with Petroleum, Chemical and Petrochemical Investment Region (PCPIR) between Visakhapatnam and Kakinada. The project envisages expansion of capacity of Visakh Refinery from 8.33 mln ton to 15 mln ton with an investment of Rs.18,412 crore.