The Numaligarh Refinery Ltd (NRL) is investing Rs 435 crore in a project for diesel quality upgrade to meet auto fuel quality norms.
The project would facilitate production of Euro-III as well as limited quantities of Euro-IV HSD at 100 per cent capacity utilisation of the refinery, NRL Managing Director B K Das told PTI.
The project was scheduled for completion in May this year, he said.
Apart from this, NRL was pursuing a CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) project involving use of natural gas in place of naptha as fuel and feed in the refinery at a cost of Rs 318 crore, he said.
Natural gas to NRL would be supplied by Oil India Ltd and transported from Duliajan to Numaligarh through a new pipeline.
NRL has also identified a project for production of high value paraffin and micro-crystalline wax utilising inherent properties of Assam crude.
The detailed report for the project, which was in the approval stage, has been prepared, Das said.
Das said currently NRL has 108 retail outlets (ROs) of which 63 were in the North East. The rest are located in West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and on the Delhi-Jaipur highway.
To a question, he said now the marketing focus would be mainly on North-East and the company was likely to put up more ROs in the region in the coming financial year.
But the number of such ROs and investments would largely depend on the developments in the petroleum retail sector in coming months, he said.
Referring to NRL's Numaligarh-Siliguri product pipeline which was commissioned last year, he said Numaligarh was located in a product surplus zone requiring marketing of over 80 per cent of its products outside North East.
The pipeline would be fully utilised for transport of surplus products to Siliguri for subsequent marketing outside the North East mainly through BPCL.