Business Standard reported that public sector Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited is looking at reviving its plan to set up a greenfield refinery plant in Visakhapatnam. The company already operates an 8.3-million tonne capacity refinery at the port city.
The plan remained only on paper after HPCL was allotted 1,500 acre land five years ago. The Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation recently cancelled the allotment and also paid back the money, which it had received towards land.
Mr BR Meena vice chairman and managing director of APIIC told Business Standard that “Petroleum Ministry officials have spoken to me on the revival of the refinery plans by the HPCL. The company is seeking to revive the project as it was not able to go for brownfield expansion at the existing refinery in Vizag.”
HPCL had approached the AP government for the land in 2005 and was subsequently chosen as an anchor client for the upcoming Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemical Investment Region. The company at that time was looking at setting up a 15 mtpa refinery with a consortium of five companies, including Mittal Energy and TOTAL of France, which had apparently backed out of the project.
A senior official from HPCL said that “We wrote to the Andhra Pradesh government a couple of months back asking them to re-allocate the land to us. As and when we secure the land, we will look at reviving the project.”
According to the official, the company now proposes to set up a 9.5 mtpa refinery, which will cost around INR 20,000 crore.
However, APIIC now wants to tread cautiously. Ms Meena said that “We will consider re allotting the land once we receive a firm commitment along with the time lines on the execution of the project from HPCL.” In recent times, the APIIC had cancelled land allotments made in favour of several private companies after they failed to implement their projects.
According to Meena, the company has informed it intends to implement the project mostly on its own.
Source - Business Standard
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