MOSCOW (MRC) -- India’s Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd will operate its 300,000 barrels-per-day refinery in southern India at about 50 percent capacity due to water shortage, reported Hydrocarbonprocessing with reference to Managing Director M Venkatesh.
"We are maximizing sewage water to sustain the operation to an extent possible," Venkatesh said on Wednesday.
The refinery has three crude units. A 60,000 bpd crude unit and some secondary units are already shut for routine maintenance, Venkatesh said, adding that his firm will shut another 96,000 bpd crude unit and a hydrocracker from Thursday.
MRPL is trying to keep the third crude unit of 142,000 bpd capacity operating for at least a month. The crude unit normally operates at a rate of about 160,000 bpd.
MRPL will meet all its commitments for fuel supply despite shutdown of half of its crude-processing capacity, Venkatesh added.
The company supplies oil products mostly to meet fuel demand in southern India.
"Considering the acute shortage of fresh water in the river Nethravathi, in absence of summer showers, MRPL Refinery Complex process units are under partial shutdown as a force majeure," MRPL said in a stock exchange filing on Wednesday.
As MRC wrote before, in June 2015, MRPL successfully commenced commercial production of PP from its polypropylene plant as part of its phase-III refinery expansion and upgradation project in Mangaluru. The plant has a capacity to produce 4,40,000 tonnes of PP per annum. Feedstock for the PP plant - polymer grade propylene - is being produced from upstream petrochemical fluidised catalytic cracking unit of the refinery. Technology provider for the PP plant is Novolen of Germany. The plant has been engineered and constructed by Engineers India Ltd.
Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL), is an oil refinery at Mangalore and is a subsidiary of ONGC, set up in 1993. The refinery is located at Katipalla, north from centre of Mangalore city. The refinery was established after displacing five villages of Bala, Kalavar, Kuthetoor, Katipalla, and Adyapadi.
MRC