IOC reveals plans to set up refinery in west coast

India’s biggest crude oil refining and marketing company, Indian Oil Corp. (IOC), announced that it is planning to set up a new refinery in the west coast of India.
“We are planning to come up with a new refinery in the western part of India by 2020. But as of now the plan is on the drawing board stage,” said R. S. Butola, chairman and managing director of IOC.
Butola said the company is planning to build a refinery near the coast so that it can import crude at a lower cost, as well as service the western Indian market. IOC’s nine refineries and another one it owns through a subsidiary, have a total refining capacity of 65 million tons per annum (MTPA), the highest crude processing capacity, or crude throughput, achieved by any company in India. Reliance Industries comes in second, with a capacity of 62 MTPA.
A new refinery would cement IOC’s number one position in the country’s refining sector. It would also help meet the gap between its current output and sales, but analysts doubt if the company would be able to fulfill what they consider a grandiose plan, since one of IOC’s most ambitious projects, the 15 MTPA Paradip refinery at Orissa, has yet to roll out its first batch of output. But Butola explained that “almost 87% of the work in the refinery is complete and we plan to commence it by the later part of next year.” (September 15, 2012)