Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will formally inaugurate the Rs 21,500-crore Guru Gobind Singh Refinery, an HPCL-Mittal Energy Limited project, in Bathinda in Punjab on April 28.
The refinery, having a processing capacity of nine mt of crude a year (180,000 barrels per day), is a joint venture between Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) and Mittal Energy — a subsidiary of steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal’s company. The project had become fully operational recently.
The state would be represented by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, his Cabinet and also senior leaders of ruling SAD-BJP alliance
Earlier, Prabh Das, managing director cum chief executive officer of HPCL-Mittal Energy Limited, informed this was the largest investment in Punjab since independence. It is a matter of record that the refinery, which started constructing in 2008, had started refining mineral oil in August 2011, in less than a period of 48 months.
Das said that the company had already constructed crude oil terminal and 1,017 km of cross country pipeline in a record 27 months.
The foundation stone of the refinery was laid in 1998 by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. However, it was stalled when the Congress government, led by Amarinder Singh, came to power in Punjab in 2002 and objected to the terms and conditions of the project. The project was revived again in 2008 after the Parkash Singh Badal government returned to power in Punjab in 2007.
Also, earlier, Sukhbir Singh Badal, Deputy Chief Minister, said that with the full operationalisation of Refinery, the Punjab government would be able to attract tertiary industry that could use the by-products of refinery as their raw material and for this purpose he asked the Industry Department to set-up an Industrial Park of 200 acres in the vicinity of Refinery.