The Hindu Business Line : ONGC to expand MRPL capacity by another 3 mt

The move will help ONGC, which holds 71.6 per cent stake in Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL), ensure higher product availability for its national network of 1,100 retail outlets expected over the next two years. The refinery expansion will coincide with ONGC's retail plans, a senior official told Business Line. Also, MRPL has permission to set up 500 retail outlets under its own brand name.

"We plan to add another refinery train to the existing two trains at the Mangalore refinery. We will begin with de-bottlenecking of existing capacity taking the present capacity to 11 million tonnes and then to 12.69 million tonnes over the next one and a half to two years," the official said.

The expansion at MRPL will also ensure that the refinery can process more varieties of crude, especially those which will be imported from ONGC's equity fields abroad.

The company plans to upgrade technology at MRPL to improve gross refinery margins and enable production of new higher margin products such as mixed xylene. ONGC has also announced plans to set up a petrochemicals project in Mangalore.

"The refinery processes crude from the Mumbai High as well as the Sudan crude that we have begun importing since last year. The expansion will ensure it can refine more types of crude. It will also ensure compliance with Euro IV environmental specifications as per the national auto fuel policy," the official said.

As per the national auto fuel policy released on October 6, 2003, India should achieve Euro IV vehicle emission norms by 2010. India's oil refineries will have to spend Rs 20,000 crore for upgradation to meet these Euro IV norms.

MRPL plans to upgrade its refinery for producing higher quality petrol and diesel meeting Euro III standards by 2005 and Euro IV specifications by 2007.

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