Indian Oil Corp. Ltd. (IOC) has let a contract to Linde PLC subsidiary Praxair India Private Ltd. to build, own, and operate an air separation unit (ASU) to supply oxygen and nitrogen to IOC’s more than 300,000-b/d full-conversion refinery at Paradip in India’s state of Odisha on the country’s northeastern coast.
Scheduled to be completed in October 2021, the ASU plant will have a combined total gas capacity of 660 tonnes/day to help support IOC’s proposed expansion of the existing Paradip refinery into an integrated petrochemical complex, Linde said on Apr. 23.
While Linde did not confirm a value of the newly awarded contract, the service provider did confirm the award follows Praxair India’s existing relationship with IOC under which it currently supplies hydrogen and nitrogen to the Paradip refinery.
Paradip petrochemical projects
To date, IOC has several petrochemical-related projects either completed or under way at Paradip as part of the government of Odisha’s plan to establish the Paradip Petroleum, Chemicals, & Petrochemical Investment Region (PCPIR).
In February 2019, IOC commissioned a 31.50 billion-rupee, 680,000-tonnes/year polypropylene unit based on LyondellBasell Industries NV’s Spheripol process technology at the site that receives propylene feedstock generated by the refinery’s 4.27 million-tpy INDMAX fluid catalytic cracking (FCC), according to updates on IOC’s website (OGJ Online, Apr. 22, 2016; Dec. 18, 2014).
Alongside undertaking a 91.37 billion-rupee project to build an integrated 1.2 million-tpy paraxylene-purified terephthalic acid (PX-PTA) plant that aims to pave the way for setting up a plastics park in Odisha, IOC also previously let contracts to Larsen & Toubro Ltd. subsidiary L&T Hydrocarbon Engineering Ltd. to provide engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning services for a 357,000-tpy monoethylene glycol (MEG) plant as well as a 180,000-tpy ethylene recovery unit (ERU) at Paradip (OGJ Online, Jan. 31, 2019).
Saudi Basic Industries Corp. and Clariant International Ltd.’s jointly owned Scientific Design Co. of Little Ferry, NJ, was to license process technology for the 37.52 billion-rupee MEG unit, while Lummus Technology LLC—a McDermott International Inc. group company—was to provide its proprietary process technology for the ERU.
Both the MEG and ERU units come as part of IOC’s broader 56.54 billion-rupee ethylene glycol project at Paradip, which intends to maximize recovery of ethylene in FCC offgases for upgrading to MEG, diethylene glycol, and triethylene glycol, according to IOC’s website.
IOC, however, has not yet disclosed a specific timeframe for startup of the PX-PTA and ethylene glycol projects.
Robert Brelsford | Downstream Editor
Robert Brelsford joined Oil & Gas Journal in October 2013 as downstream technology editor after 8 years as a crude oil price and news reporter on spot crude transactions at the US Gulf Coast, West Coast, Canadian, and Latin American markets. He holds a BA (2000) in English from Rice University and an MS (2003) in education and social policy from Northwestern University.
