State-owned Hindustan Petroleum plans to invest Rs 30,000 crore to set up an 18 million tonnes a year refinery on the West Coast, Chairman and Managing Director Subir Roychowdhary said today.
The new refinery, to be set up in Maharashtra, was conceptualised to make up for space constraints at HPCL's existing Mumbai Refinery.
"We have been told that 1,800 acres of land is available with MIDC (Maharashtra Industrial Development Corp). We have asked for 1,000 acres more land," he told reporters here.
State-owned Engineers India has been engaged to carry out a feasibility report study on the proposed refinery. The options under consideration are a single 18 million tonnes per annum unit or two units of 9 million tonnes per annum capacity each.
The detailed feasibility report (DFR) will be ready by December, Roychowdhary said.
The land earmarked for the refinery is located between Ratnagiri and Raigad and the unit, called Maharashtra Refinery, would be completed within 48 months from the date of receipt of all approvals.
"We are doing configuration studies," he said.
HPCL face tremendous space constraints at its existing 6.5 million tonnes a year Mumbai refinery. A refinery of this size is usually spread over 2,000 acres of land, but HPCL's refinery is situated in a plot measuring just 350 acres.
The existing Mumbai Refinery may eventually be shutdown once the new refinery is built.
HPCL, which also has a 7.5 million tonnes a year unit at Vizag, in Andhra Pradesh, is building a 9 million tonnes per annum plant at Bhatinda, in Punjab, under a joint venture with steel czar Lakshmi Mittal.
Roychowdhary said the Bhatinda project is on schedule for mechanical completion in March, 2011.
"The refinery will be fully commissioned in August- September, 2011," he said.
The Bhatinda refinery will cater to fuel demand in Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, UP and parts of Bihar. HPCL has almost finished laying a product pipeline to transport fuel from Bhatinda to Delhi, from where it can be moved by train to anywhere in UP and parts of Bihar.
