CM urges Centre to expedite refinery project

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, OCT. 7. The Chief Minister, Mr. M. Karunanidhi, on Thursday urged the Centre to expedite setting up a 12 million tonne refinery and a naphtha cracker unit at Nagapattinam.

Laying the foundation stone of the three million tonne refinery expansion project of the Chennai Petroleum Corporation (CPCL) at Manali, he urged the Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Mr. Ram Naik, who participated in the function, to accord the requisite clearances for the projects immediately. The refinery project was estimated to cost Rs. 10,000 crores.

Hailing the contribution of CPCL in the development of petroleum products-based industry in the State, the Chief Minister said the company had increased its refining capacity steadily from 2.5 million tonnes in 1969 to 6.5 million tonne at present.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Naik assured to do the needful. Announcing that the CPCL would soon become a subsidiary of the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), as part of the restructuring plan for the oil industry, the Minister assured the employees that their interests would be protected. The process of attaching the four stand-alone refineries in the country, at Chennai, Kochi, Bongaigoan and Numaligarh, to IOC and Bharat Petroleum Corporation, would be completed by March 2001.

Urging the CPCL to complete its Rs. 2,360 crores refinery expansion within schedule and without any cost overruns, he said the country had attained self-sufficiency in refining.

Dr. S. Narayan, Secretary to the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, said an additional 50 million tonne refining capacity would be added in ten years.

Listing out the efforts taken by the Centre to boast indigenous crude oil production, Mr. E. Ponnuswamy, Union Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas, said 25 oil blocks were offered recently under the New Exploration Licencing Policy (NELP).

Mr. S. Rammohan, the CPCL Chairman and Managing Director, said ``the expansion project envisaged process integration with the existing refinery to improve distillates yield, product quality and to reduce environmental emissions from the existing refinery''.

The residue from the visbreaker unit of the proposed refinery would be routed as fuel to the downstream power project planned by the company as a joint venture.

The company, he added, was also implementing an expansion programme to increase the refining capacity of its Cauvery Basin refinery, at Panangudi in Nagapattinam, to one million tonne. The expansion was being carried out by de-bottlenecking at a cost of about Rs. 30 crores.

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Section  : Southern States
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