The Gujarat Refinery of Indian Oil has finalised plans to invest more than Rs 24,000 crore in the state over the next three to four years, a senior official said on Wednesday.
A major chunk of the planned investment will be for the expansion of the Gujarat Refinery's capacity from existing 13.7 million Tonne Per Annum (TPA) to 18 million TPA.
"The Indian Oil Board has given approval for expansion of the Refinery's capacity at an estimated cost of Rs 15,034 crore. The expansion will lead to improvement in distillate yield thereby enabling the production of more value-added products at the refinery, which will lead to improved Gross Refining Margins (GRMs) and profitability," Sudhir Kumar, executive director, Gujarat Refinery, told media-persons in Vadodara.
The refinery will invest Rs1,315 crore towards improving the fuel quality to BS-IV and Rs3,380 crore to meet the BS-VI norms over the next 18 months or so.
Kumar said that the Refinery will invest Rs4,157 crore for the Oxo Alcohol project to produce Butyl Acrylate as the final product, which would mark Indian Oil's foray into the speciality product. The Refinery will also invest Rs288 crore to expand the capacity of its existing Linear Alkyl Benzene (LAB) unit from 120 thousand TPA to 162 thousand TPA. LAB is mainly used in producing detergents/surfactants and is biodegradable by nature.
"The new projects will generate direct employment for about 200 persons and indirect employment for nearly 10,000 people at the peak phase of project executions," he said.
A 517-km 3.7 million TPA Koyali-Ahmednagar-Solapur) product pipeline at a cost of Rs1,947 crore, and 106-km captive natural gas pipeline from Dahej to Koyali at an estimated cost of Rs315 crore are the other projects to be undertaken by Gujarat Refinery, Kumar added.
