MOSCOW (MRC) -- Indian Oil Corp., the nation’s biggest refiner, plans to spend 160 billion rupees (USD2.4 billion) to build a plant for producing synthetic ethanol as it seeks to secure supplies of the biofuel to meet mandatory blending norms, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.
The state-run company is studying the project to produce 1 million metric tons of ethanol annually for blending with gasoline, S. Mitra, executive director at Indian Oil, said in an interview. Indian Oil plans to seek investment approval from its board next year, after which the facility, to be located at Paradip in eastern India, will take about four years to complete, he said.
The refiner will partner with Dallas-based Celanese Corp. for the ethanol project, which will use petroleum coke as feedstock from Indian Oil’s two refineries in the region, Mitra said.
India is facing a supply shortage of the biofuel, hindering plans to achieve mandatory five percent blending, Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said earlier this month. In December, the federal government allowed ethanol production from non-food feedstock including petrochemicals to improve availability.
Indian Oil and two other state-run refiners, Hindustan Petroleum Corp. and Bharat Petroleum Corp., are seeking 2.66 billion liters of ethanol in the 12 months to Nov. 30, 2016. The supply shortage is prompting Indian Oil, which would need nearly half of the projected requirement, to consider producing its own ethanol, Mitra said.
Indian Oil, which also runs the biggest network of fuel stations in the country, bought about 186 million liters of ethanol for blending through the year to March 31.
As MRC wrote before, Indian Oil Corporation's Rs 34,555-crore 15 million tonnes per annum Paradip Refinery was commissioned in phases from March 2015 onwards. Indian Oil Corporation is conducting feasibility studies to set up a petrochemical complex at Paradip in Odisha for Rs 20,000 crore. The petrochemical complex would be built in the vicinity of the company’s to-be-commissioned 15-mln tpa greenfield refinery at Paradip. The petrochemical complex would be in addition to the already announced Rs 3,150-crore polypropylene project at the same location, the foundation stone for which was laid by MOS for petroleum and natural gas.
Indian Oil Corporation Limited, or IndianOil, is an Indian state-owned oil and gas corporation with its headquarters in New Delhi, India.
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