India’s MRPL updates refinery expansion project

Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals Ltd. (MRPL), a subsidiary of Oil & Natural Gas Corp. Ltd., is nearing completion of a long-delayed expansion project at its 194,000-b/d refinery in Mangalore, India.

Progress on the third phase of the expansion and upgrading project stood at 99.5% as of Jan. 15, MRPL said in a Feb. 8 statement announcing its third-quarter 2013 financial results.

The last three major secondary processing units—which include a delayed coker and associated hydrotreater, a fluid catalytic cracker, and a captive power plant (CPP) at the refinery site—have yet to be commissioned, MRPL said, adding that Bharat Heavy Electrical Ltd.’s work progress on the CPP continues to be “a major factor for delayed commissioning of the units.”

The overall progress on an integrated polypropylene unit included in the expansion stood at 93.4% as of Jan. 15, MRPL said.

But no timeframe was disclosed for either the commissioning of remaining processing units or the full completion of the third-phase expansion.

The Phase 3 expansion project, announced in February 2010 (OGJ Online, June 8, 2010), was designed to increase the refinery’s complexity and profitability by increasing refining capacity to 300,000 b/d as well as equip the plant to process lower-cost heavy, sour, and high-TAN crudes, according to past MRPL annual reports.

As of July 15, 2013, all major process units associated with the expansion had achieved mechanical completion and were awaiting uninterrupted steam and power from the CPP to begin commissioning activities, which MRPL had expected to occur by October 2013, the company said in its most recent annual report.