ONGC plans Rs 17000 cr petrochemical complex

Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, the country's largest oil producer, has lined up massive investment plans for a petrochemical complex here.

"We would be investing Rs 17,000 crore to set up the petrochemical complex here," said R S Sharma, CMD, ONGC.

The company was to begin was slated to lay the foundation laying ceremony of its Rs 4,900 crore complex last Friday, but the function was postponed due to bad weather.

The petrochemicals complex would be executed through a special purpose vehicle of ONGC. While ONGC would hold 26 per cent stake in the SPV, Karnataka Industrial Development Corp would have 23 per cent and strategic investors 51 per cent.

The project would be completed in three years after finalisation of the process licensor and engineering, which is expected in a year, he said.

Sharma said MRPL (ONGC subsidiary) also plans to pump in about Rs 12,000 crore for setting up an olefin complex, for which state-owned Engineers India Ltd has been asked to prepare a detailed feasibility report.

The ONGC subsidiary is also expanding its naphtha production capacity from 9.69 million tonne per annum at present to 15 million tonne a year at an estimated cost of Rs 8,000 crore, he said.

The two projects are part of ONGC's over Rs 35,000 crore investment in Mangalore SEZ, which will house a new 15 million tonne refinery, power, LNG and petrochemical plants.

Sharma said around 200 acre land, including that for a green belt, would be required for the aromatic complex to produce petrochemical building blocks paraxylene and benzene, the first in Southern India.

It would need 1,600 cubic meters of raw water per hour.

The integrated aromatics (petrochemicals) complex will produce paraxylene. The naphtha produced at MRPL will be upgraded to paraxylene in this aromatics complex, he said.

Around two million tonne per annum of heavy naphtha would be the feedstock to produce 0.95 million tonne a year of paraxylene and around 0.L5 million tonne per annum of benzene, the rest being LPG, gasoline pool feed and tail gas.

The proposed olefin complex would use naphtha and propylene to produce polymers such as high-density polyethelene, linear low-density polyethelene and polypropylene.