MOSCOW (MRC) -- India Bharat Petroleum Corp has deferred the shutdown of secondary units at its Kochi and Mumbai refineries due to shortage of manpower and material to carry out the turnaround job, its head of refineries R. Ramachandran said, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.
“At this point of time we are not having the wherewithal to take any shut down because simply men power is not there material will not be available so we will be reviewing the shutdown plans as the situation evolves.. there will be no turnaround in the month of April,” Ramachandran told Reuters.
India imposed a sweeping lockdown of its 1.3 billion people on Wednesday for 21 days, and is only allowing the supply of essential commodities. The move prompted several industries to shut operations and some ports in the country to declare force majeure.
He said BPCL had plans to shut the continuous catalytic cracker and some other units at its 240,000 barrels per day (bpd) Mumbai refinery in western India and vacuum gasoil de-sulphuriser and some other units at 310,000 bpd Kochi refinery for two to three weeks in April.
Falling fuel demand has already prompted Indian refiners to reduce crude processing.
As MRC informed earlier, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) will invest about Rs25,000 crore to set up an ethylene cracker plant at Rasayani, 50 kilometres from its Mumbai refinery, as the firm pushes further into the petrochemicals business to fuel growth.
BPCL will commission its Rs5,236 crore Propylene Derivative Petrochemical Project (PDPP) at Kochi refinery for manufacturing niche petrochemicals in the next six months. To expand its product portfolio further, BPCL is investing Rs11,130 crore to set up a facility in Kochi refinery for manufacturing Polyols, Propylene Glycol and Mono-Ethylene Glycol.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing PE and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,904,410 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments increased from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,161,830 tonnes in January-November 2019, up by 7% year on year. Deliveries of all grades of propylene polymers increased, with the homopolymer PP segment accounting for the largest increase.
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.
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