State-owned Engineers India Ltd (EIL) has been awarded the prestigious project management consultancy (PMC) contract for the Mundra-Bhatinda crude oil pipeline for Guru Govind Singh Refinery of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL).
EIL was able to get the PMC contract for the 1,006 km pipeline in the face of stiff international competition. EIL's bid was found lowest among the 11 offers received under the international competitive bidding norms.
The award, which was made earlier this month, is expected to give the much-needed fillip to the work at the refinery site in Bhatinda which is going full swing after the registration of the company implementing the project.
The company, Guru Govind Singh Refinery Ltd, was registered in December last and the Rs 9806-crore project is being implemented by HPCL on its own.
The company has already spent Rs 150 crore on the project and made commitments exceeding Rs 300 crore. It is expected to take 48 months from the zero date of December 2000 for the project to be completed.
It is learnt that the site grating work and construction of a 30 km road within the boundary of the refinery is on. The total cost of this contract is expected to be around Rs 18 crore.
The project had run into rough weather when its first proposed joint venture partner, Saudi Aramco, and later US Exxon had pulled out from the project saying that refinery margins would not be profitable in the project.
Though senior officials of HPCL have been declaring that the French multinational TotalFina has evinced interest in participating in the equity of the project, it is not clear what is holding it back.
The detailed feasibility report for the project has been prepared by Lummus and the project would also have a single point mooring and crude oil terminal at Mundra.
The crude oil pipeline has been designed with a capacity of 18 million metric tonne per annum that would be useful once the company decides to expand the refinery capacity at a later date.
During the Ninth Plan, HPCL has planned a total investment of Rs 10,316 crore, out of which it had spent Rs 1552 crore for the diesel de-sulphurisation unit (DHDS) at its Visakh refinery and Rs 964 crore for the expansion of the refinery.
