Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) will begin fuel supplies from its Rs 11,397-crore Bina refinery in Madhya Pradesh from September, about six months later than envisaged as BHEL delayed key equipment supply.
"We should be commissioning the refinery by July," BPCL Chairman and Managing Director Ashok Sinha told reporters here.
The 6 million tons a year refinery, being built by Bharat Oman Refineries Ltd - a joint venture of BPCL and Oman Oil Company, is mechanically complete but has not yet started commissioning of facilities in absence of a 99-MW captive power plant that was to be set up by state-run BHEL.
Sinha said the commissioning will start in April and the entire refinery would be commissioned by July. Fuel supplies will begin from September after BORL stabilises the unit.
While Sinha did not elaborate on delay in commissioning of the refinery, a company source said BHEL was to set up a captive power plant at refinery by May 2009 but has not yet set up even the boiler. Besides supplying power to the refinery, the 99-MW unit would also provide steam for conversion of crude oil into petroleum products.
"BHEL has told us that the boiler will be in place by the middle of this month and the three 33-MW steam turbines generators would be in installed by April," he said.
The Bina refinery was initially planned to be completed by December 2009.
BHEL was in October 2006 awarded a lump-sum turnkey EPC contract for setting up the captive power plant. The Rs 950-crore contract was to be completed in 30 months.
"There has been delay because multiple units of BHEL were to supply equipments for the power plant," the source said. The equipments for the project are being supplied by BHEL's plants at Hyderabad, Trichy, Ranipet, Bhopal, Jhansi and electronics division, Bangalore. The civil works and erection and commissioning of the captive power plant is to be done by BHEL's Nagpur unit.
The source said BPCL has already contracted 0.5 million tons of crude oil from Saudi Arabia to start the refinery.
"We have imported one cargo and another is arriving next month." BORL has laid a 1,000-km pipeline from Vadinar to Bina to bring crude oil to the refinery. "We are currently filling the pipeline," the source said.
Oman Oil Company has 26 per cent stake in the project.
