Govt looks at ‘small’ refineries to skirt land hurdles

NEW DELHI: The government is looking at building “small” refineries as an option to overcome land and other hurdles as the country looks at 450 million tonne annual refining capacity, Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Tuesday.
“(Large) refineries are high cost (proposition). We are looking at a large number of up to 20 million metric tonne per annum capacity refineries which are smaller ones.If we make it too big then land acquisition and other issue come up,” Puri said at a function organised by the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Tuesday.
Singh said India can plan to have 300 million tonne per annum capacity, 20% more than 252 million tonne capacity as present. “We need to take few more policy decisions for taking it up to 450 MMTPA (target),” he added.
At present, India has a refining capacity of 252 MMTPA.
Puri’s statement belies frustrations over the stalled proposal by a consortium of state-owned oil companies for building a mega-refinery of 60 million tonne annual capacity at Ratnagiri in Maharashtra.
He said “we need refineries as those would make petrochemicals, green hydrogen etc,” as India becomes a global green energy hub.
Speaking at the same event, Essar Exploration and Production Ltd CEO Pankaj Kalra said India witnessed an increase of 13% in annual gas production and then company contributed nearly 65% to India's overall CBM (coal bed methane) production. “We have plans to expand our production by almost five times in the next three to five years and contribute 5% of overall production in India.”