HPCL to put in Rs 20000cr in Vizag

State-owned Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) is planning over Rs 20,000 crore investment in Visakhapatnam over the next four to five years.

HPCL has proposed to set up a petrochemical complex at the Andhra Pradesh Special Economic Zone, which is coming up on more than 9,000 acres near Visakhapatnam.

"The state government has already allotted 1,000 acres to us at the SEZ as against 3,500 acres we sought," A S Rao, HPCL executive director, Visakha refinery, told mediapersons here.

Of the proposed investment, the corporation is planning to spend nearly Rs10,000 crore on its petrochemical project and Rs 9,000-10,000 crore on expansion of Visakha refinery capacity to 15 million tonnes, he said.

A single point mooring facility with crude oil terminal is also being set up at an estimated cost of Rs 600 crore. For this, discussions are going on with the Vizag Port for acquiring additional land required for the expansion activities and for a new crude oil terminal, Rao said.

In addition to this, HPCL is setting up a mounded bullet storage facility for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) at an investment of about Rs 125 crore. The company has appointed PDIL as the consultant to implement this project. After completion of work on this, LPG storage capacity at Visakha refinery would go up to 7,500 tonnes.

During 2005-06, Visakha refinery processed 75.74 lakh tonnes of crude oil as against the original capacity of 75 lakh tonnes.

As on date, the refinery has achieved 3.47 safe million-man hours, and fire-free days reached 1,080.