India's refinery capacity to go up 20 mt by '07

Refinery capacity in India is slated to go up to 154 million tonnes by 2007 from 134 million tonnes at present. The value of petroleum products exported will go up to $10 billion during the current year compared with $6.8 billion last year.

Speaking at a Teri energy meet here today, Prabh Das, joint secretary, ministry of petroleum, said higher refining capacity would be aided by commissioning of new refineries. The new ones coming up include Reliance Industries' Jamnagar refinery and Essar's Vadinar refinery.

In fact, Essar Oil executives said the first phase of the company's $2.2 million Vadinar refinery in Gujarat will be set up by July. Essar will set up 1,500 petrol pumps for retailing fuel. The company already has 700 petrol stations.

The company also plans to set up over 5,000 retail outlets across the country by 2008 and capture at least 10 per cent of the fuel market share.

"To begin with, the refinery will have a capacity of seven million tonnes, which will be increased to 10.5 million tonnes by January 2007," Essar Oil Chief Executive Raj Varma told reporters at the sidelines of the conference.

Bharat Petroleum Corporation will also ramp up its Mumbai refinery to full capacity of 12 million tonnes in 2006-07 (April-March) compared with 10.3 million tonnes this year, Chairman and Managing Director A K Sinha said.

He said the company planned to import 8.5 million tonnes of crude oil through term contracts in 2006-07, of which it will buy 3.5 million tonnes from Saudi Arabia, 2 million tonnes from Kuwait Petroleum and another 1 million tonnes from Abu Dhabi National Oil Co.

The company will import a little less than one million tonnes each from Malaysian Petronas and Libya.

Overseas arms of state-run companies should be given more autonomy to make acquisitions abroad more transparent, Kirit Parikh, Planning Commission member, said at the conference.

"The ideal situation is more financial powers to raise money on their own for companies like ONGC Videsh and the proposed Coal Videsh," he said.