MOSCOW (MRC) -- India's state-run Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd. is set to boost its naphtha exports next year with the completion of expansion works at its Kochi refinery to 15 million mt/year from 9.5 million mt/year, scheduled around the first quarter, industry sources said last week, as per Apic-online.
The expansion is expected to increase BPCL's naphtha production by 10%-15% - at least 550,000 mt/year, or around 13,500 b/d - which would enable the refiner to restore monthly exports from Kochi on the Indian southwest coast, to two cargoes, one source familiar with the matter said.
But the increase in exports from Kochi would only last for around a year, as naphtha would be diverted as feedstock into BPCL's new petrochemical project, the source said.
The propylene derivatives petrochemical project in Kochi is expected to be completed around the end of next year, and is due for commissioning around the first-quarter of 2018, industry sources said.
It will have the capacity to produce 47,000 mt/year of acrylic acid, 92,000 mt/year of oxo-alcohols and 190,000 mt/year of acrylates and will require 250,000 mt/year of propylene to produce 329,000 mt/year of petrochemicals.
BPCL in late December last year commissioned a new 6 million mt/year crude distillation unit, replacing two old CDUs with 2 million mt/year and 4 million mt/year capacity, at its Mumbai refinery on the Indian west coast. The new CDU gives BPCL the option of processing an equal volume of high and low sulfur crude grades, a refinery official had said.
With the new CDU, the Mumbai refinery can process up to 14 million mt/year of crude.
As MRC wrote before, in January 2015, Bharat Petroleum Corporation planned to invest Rs. 4,800 crore in the propylene derivative petrochemical project in Kochi, which was earlier planned as a joint venture. Cost of the integrated refinery expansion and petrochemical project is Rs. 25,000 crore and is the single largest investment in Kerala. Propylene for the project will be sourced from the expanded refinery. The capacity of the refinery is being raised from 9.5 mln tpa to 15.5 mln tons.
Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) is an Indian state-controlled oil and gas company headquartered in Mumbai, India. Bharat Petroleum owns refineries at Mumbai, Maharashtra and Kochi, Kerala (Kochi Refineries) with a capacity of 12 and 9.5 million metric tonnes per year.
MRC