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Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL) will spend about Rs 1,800 crore towards revamping its three diesel treating and hydrotreating units at its Gujarat refinery in Jawahar Nagar near Vadodara as a part of quality upgradation to meet the standards under Central Government's Auto Fuel Policy.
At a meeting with mediapersons at the Refinery on Tuesday, Executive Director, S K Dhar Gupta said, "We will spend about Rs 1,800 crore for revamping three diesel treating units. This will make the refinery capable to supply 100 per cent Bharat Stage (BS) - IV compliant diesel and petrol."
Of the total monthly petrol production of 1.60 lakh tonnes, the refinery is currently producing about 1.50 lakh to 1.55 lakh tonnes of BS-IV compliant petrol. Faced with lesser demand of BS-IV High Speed Diesel (HSD) in the region, the refinery is currently producing only 20-25 per cent of its 6.50 lakh tonnes of diesel production per month.
As per the Central government's Auto Fuel Vision & Policy 2025, supply of BS-IV fuels is expected to happen from April 2017. The policy sets the low sulphur levels in fuels like diesel and petrol at 50 ppm. Under BS-III norms, petrol and diesel have sulphur content of 150 ppm and 350 ppm respectively.
"Gujarat refinery is under going revamp of its Diesel Treating Units including Diesel Hydrotreating Unit (DHDT), Diesel Hydrodesulphurization Unit (DHDS) and Vacuum Gas Oil Hydrotreating Unit (VGO-HDT) March 2017," said Dhar Gupta.
Also, the refinery is gearing-up itself for the BS-V compliant by 2020. New units of DHDT, gasoline sulphur treatment unit and hydrogen generation unit along with allied facilities will be set up. "The investment requirement for the same is not yet finalised. The project is currently at the planning stage," he added.
Dhar Gupta further added that the refinery will also look for brownfield expansion to augment additional refining capacity from the current 13.7 mmtpa to 18 mmtpa with BS-V compliance by the year 2019-20.
"The capacity expansion will include new units of atmospheric & vacuum distillation unit (AVU) of 9 mmtpa capacity. The expansion will lead to improvement in distillate yield thereby enabling production of more value-added products from the refinery. This will further benefit with improved Gross Refining Margins (GRMs) for the refinery," said Dhar Gupta.
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