CPCL lets contract for grassroots Cauvery Basin refinery

Chennai Petroleum Corp. Ltd. (CPCL), a partly owned subsidiary of Indian Oil Corp. Ltd., has let a contract to McDermott International Inc. to provide a suite of consultancy services for CPCL’s recently approved project to build a grassroots 9-million tonnes/year refinery at Cauvery Basin, in Panangudi Village, Nagapattinam District, Tamilnadu, India (OGJ Online, Feb. 2, 2021).

As part of the Oct. 4 contract, McDermott will deliver project management consultancy (PMC) and engineering, procurement, and construction management (EPCM) consultancy services for the second package of the Cauvery Basin refinery project, the service provider said.

McDermott disclosed no details regarding the project’s Package 2 scope, nor did it reveal a value of the PMC-EPCM contract.

The service provider did confirm, however, that it will begin work on the project sometime during this quarter.

Intended to help meet southern India’s demand for petroleum products, the planned Cauvery Basin project—which broke ground in February—will involve dismantling of CPCL’s existing 1-million tpy refinery at the site—which ceased operations on Apr. 1, 2019—for the new construction (OGJ Online, Feb. 17, 2021).

According to project documents from CPCL, the government of India, and Engineers India Ltd. (EIL), which completed a detailed feasibility report as well as carried out technology evaluation and process licensor selection for the project, the new refining and integrated petrochemical complex will include the following major units and capacities:

• Combined crude-vacuum distillation unit; 9 million tpy.
• Naphtha hydrotreating unit; 1.5 million tpy.
• Isomerization unit; 570,000 tpy.
• CCR unit; 625,000 tpy.
• Diesel hydrotreating unit; 5 million tpy.
• Vacuum gas oil hydrotreating unit; 3 million tpy.
• INDMAX FCC unit; 2.43 million tpy.
• INDMAX FCC gasoline hydrotreating (desulfurization) unit; 700,000 tpy.
• OCTAMAX unit; 125,000 tpy.
• Polypropylene unit; 475,000 tpy.
• Delayed coking unit; 2.5 million tpy.
• Hydrogen generation unit; 98,000 tpy.
• Sulfur recovery unit (SRU) with independent tail-gas treatment unit (TGTU), Train 1; 432 tonnes/day.
• SRU with independent TGTU, Train 2; 432 tonnes/day.

Start of construction on the refinery follows IOC’s approval for incorporation of a joint venture under which IOC (25%) and CPCL (25%) would hold a combined 50% equity interest for developing the project. Subject to statutory approvals, the remaining 50% interest in the new refinery JV would be held by outside financial, strategic, or public investors to be identified later, IOC said.

Definitive timelines for the project’s construction and targeted commissioning have yet to be confirmed.