Date:07/11/2009 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2009/11/07/stories/2009110753940800.htm

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

“Relocation of oil facilities not easy”

Deepa H Ramakrishnan

— Photo: M.Karunakaran

SAFETY MATTERS: P.K.Sinha, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (right), along with IOC Chairman Sarthak Behuria and senior officials of oil industry going round the poster exhibition organised as part of the seminar in Mamallapuram on Thursday.

CHENNAI: Relocating oil installations to places far away from the cities is not an easy task, senior officials in the oil industry said here on Thursday.

Moreover, the facilities, such as oil terminals, depots and refineries, were set up on the outskirts several decades ago. Over the years, the habitations followed the installations.

The officials said this in an interaction with mediapersons on the sidelines of a three-day seminar on “Harvesting excellence through knowledge partnership: Challenges for the hydrocarbon sector” that got under way at Mamallapuram on Thursday. It is being organised by the Centre for High Technology (CHT) and Chennai Petroleum Corporation Ltd (CPCL).

CPCL Managing Director K. K. Acharya said that when the company’s refinery in Manali (near Chennai) was established in 1969, there were no residential colonies nearby. But with the growth and development of the refinery and several other companies in the Manali industrial belt, the area has become thickly populated. He was responding to a query related to the recent fire at Jaipur depot of IOC.

IOC Chairman Sarthak Behuria, who termed the fire accident as unfortunate, said two committees had been constituted to look into the causes and evaluate safety measures to avoid such incidents. The company would share the report pertaining to the accident with other oil majors as a preventive measure to avoid such disasters in future. To a question he said that IOC had doubled its spending on research and development from Rs.100 crore and this was being spent in the fields of lubricants, fuels, refinery technology, oil pipelines and renewables.

P.K.Sinha, Additional Secretary and Finance Advisor, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, said four major challenges facing the refining sector were the need to develop indigenous technologies for processing, optimisation, energy conservation and refinery upgradation. He also advocated regular meetings of the top executives of national oil companies for exchanging knowledge.