IOC adding new processing unit at Haldia refinery

Indian Oil Corp. Ltd. (IOC) has broken ground on construction of a new processing unit to improve quality and production capacity of lubricant base oils at its recently expanded 8-million tonnes/year refinery in Haldia, Purba Medinipur, West Bengal, India.

Shri Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, laid the foundation stone of the planned catalytic dewaxing unit in a ceremony on Feb. 7, the Indian government said in a release IOC reposted to its website.

Part of India’s commitment to produce cleaner fuels, the catalytic dewaxing unit—which, once in service, will be the Haldia refinery’s second—comes as part of IOC’s capacity augmentation of its Bharat Stage VI (BS-VI, equivalent to Euro 6) plant to produce low-sulfur fuels and help reduce India’s current reliance on imports of lube base oils, Modi said.

Start of construction on the project follows IOC’s 2019 contract award to Chevron Lummus Global LLC to deliver technology licensing and engineering for the 270,000-tonne/year lubricants base oil plant, which will be equipped with CLG’s proprietary Isodewaxing and Isofinishing technologies (OGJ Online, July 30, 2019).

First proposed in 2016, the catalytic dewaxing unit at Haldia will be equipped to produce 100% premium API Group III base oils by processing unconverted oil from an upstream hydrocracking unit at the refinery. The unit also will have the capability to produce API Group II base oils, as well as white oil and transformer oil as specialty products, according to a series of IOC official project documents filed with Indian regulators.

Granted final environmental clearance to proceed by India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest, & Climate Change on Jan. 5, 2021, the estimated 9.67-billion rupee catalytic Isodewaxing unit will include construction of new off-site and auxiliary installations, as well as a new piping system to interconnect the grassroots unit to existing units at the refinery, according to project documents.

In a 2019 description of the proposed project, IOC said the Haldia refinery currently operates a 200,000-tpy catalytic Isodewaxing unit for poruction of API Group II base oils.

The new unit is scheduled for startup by November 2022, according to IOC’s latest annual report to investors.