Indian Oil Corporation (IndianOil) has restarted several process units at its refineries that were down due to the lockdown. The restarting of units is with the demand for petroleum products gradually picking up, a company statement said.

“With throughputs gradually picking up pace, the refineries are currently operating at about 60 per cent of their design capacities with plans to scale up to 80 per cent of the design levels by the end of the month,” the statement said.

Similarly, IndianOil has resumed manufacture of petrochemical intermediates like HDPE (high-density polyethylene) and Polypropylene at its Panipat complex. With the demand for these grades likely to increase even further in the coming days, the Naphtha Cracker, as well as the MEG (Mono-ethylene-glycol) plant at Panipat, are back in operation. The Polypropylene plant at Paradip too will resume operations in a couple of days, and other polymer units are also being readied to go online this month itself. The revival of the Panipat Naphtha cracker will also facilitate a further increase in refinery crude oil throughputs, the company said.

IndianOil’s refineries were operating full throttle before the COVID-19 lockdown but had to curtail throughputs and bring operations down to nearly 45 per cent of design capacities by the first week of April 2020 given product containment issues forced by a steep drop in demand. Despite substantial reduction in the sale of petrol, diesel, ATF, fuel oil, bitumen, etc., there was a spike in demand for LPG cooking gas, and the refineries responded to the challenge by improving LPG yield from units like FCC/IndMax, etc.

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