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IOC final clearance for Haldia hydrocracker project

Our Bureau

CALCUTTA, Dec. 14

THE board of Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) has cleared the Rs 1,506-crore hydrocracker project for its refinery at Haldia. IFP, France, would supply the process design and catalyst technology.

The global tenders for various plants of the project such as two sulphur units (capacity 75 tonnes per day), hydrogen (70,000 tpa), gas turbine (25 MW) nitrogen and effluent treatment would be floated in due course. The plan is to ready the project for o peration within 30 months from now.

The first stage clearance to the project was given a few months ago and the final clearance only a few days ago.

Talking to Business Line on Thursday, Mr B.K. Mukherjee, Executive Director of IOC's Haldia refinery, said the IOC board also cleared the Rs 322-crore quality upgradation project for the refinery a few days ago. The project comprises three plants, namely for desulphurisation, benzene saturation and isomerisation.

IOC would soon invite offers from international licensors such as Mobil, UOP and IFP to obtain the technology.

Several other projects in various stages of construction in the refinery include the 0.7-m.t. fluidised catalytic cracking unit (FCCU) at an investment of Rs 506 crore, vacuum distillation unit (VDU - 2.2 m.t., Rs 90 crore) and lube isodewaxing unit (1,6 0,000 tonnes, Rs 460 crore). Nearly 80 per cent of the work on the first two plants were completed.

While Stone Webster had supplied the technology for the FCCU unit and Mobil for the isodewaxing unit, VDU received IOC's own technology, with Engineers India Ltd providing the technology for the furnace and the column.

The objective of setting up so many plants, according to Mr Mukherjee, had been three-fold, namely quality and distillate upgradation, and energy conservation.

Towards achieving these objectives, the refinery had already commissioned the residual oil supercritical extraction (ROSE) plant (capacity 80,000 tpa) at a cost of Rs 48 crore, with design and process technology supplied by Kellog, NMP (N-methyl pyrroled one, capacity 3,50,000 tonnes) at a cost of Rs 48 crore, with technology supplied by the Indian Institute of Petroleum, Dehra Dun and Madras Refineries Ltd. The MCW (micro crystalline wax) unit had also been commissioned at a cost of more than Rs 40 cror e with technology supplied by IFP, France.

The Haldia refinery was in dire need of these units not only to increase its throughput but also to produce high-valued products. In 1999-2000, the refinery processed 4.2 million tonnes of crude and recorded a loss of about Rs 38 crores, mainly due to th e high cost of input (crude) and low price of the output (products).

The commissioning of some of the new plants and special measures taken during the month-long shutdown of the refinery in July-August to improve the quality of the yield was expected to help the refinery post profit in the current financial year.

``Since September, we are earning an additional Rs 12 crore every month,'' Mr Mukherjee said, adding, ``from 2001-2002 fiscal, the throughput will rise to six mtpa initially and gradually to 7.5 mtpa.''