Gujarat Refinery aims at completing project by Mar '10

Vadodara: Gujarat Refinery is planning to complete a mega project to upgrade quality of petrol and diesel equivalent to Euro-III and IV grade by March 2010.

On January 29, 2007, the Indian Oil Corporation board had approved the Rs 5,693-crore project that also envisages to improve the distillate yield by around 7 per cent through residue upgradation and replacement of 100 per cent low sulphur imported crude with cheaper high sulphur crude.

Altogether, 11 contracts are working on this project on which overall progress achieved till March 2008 was 24.04 per cent against the plan of 22 per cent, the company said in a statement here.

In December 2007, the board had also approved to prepare a Detailed Feasibility Report (DFR) for production of paraxylene to the tune of 3.70 lakh tonnes a year at Gujarat Refinery from naphtha as potential exists for consideration of merchant sale in the Asia-Pacific Region and domestic requirement.

Gujarat Refinery, since its inception in 1965 with 2 million tonnes per annum (mtpa), has now grown to 13.7 mtpa and is the largest public sector refinery in the country. It achieved the highest-ever crude throughput of 13.71 million tonnes (mt) in 2007-08 surpassing the previous best of 12.95 mt achieved in 2006-07.