Indian Oil commissions unit at Paradip refinery

Indian Oil Corp. Ltd. (IOC) has commissioned another unit at its long-delayed 15 million-tonne/year, full-conversion refinery at Paradip, on India’s northeastern coast (OGJ Online, Nov. 16, 2011).

The refinery’s diesel hydrotreater began operations on Oct. 13, IOC said.

The unit is designed to process 5.2 million tpy of blended gas oil to produce ultralow-sulfur diesel that with a maximum sulfur content of 10 ppm, the company said.

The diesel hydrotreater uses Shell Global Solutions’ (SGS) deep hydrodesulfurization technology (OGJ Online, Apr. 29, 2015).

IOC previously initiated crude processing at Paradip’s atmospheric and vacuum distillation unit in late April, with the unit now producing LPG, naphtha, kerosene, gas oil, reduced crude oil, and other products.

While secondary units were gearing up for startup at the time, IOC Director Sanjiv Singh said full commissioning of the integrated refining complex likely would take 6-8 months.

The $5-billion grassroots refinery, which began some startup activities in early 2014, initially was scheduled to become fully operational in November 2013, with additional commissioning of units subsequently rescheduled for December 2014 (OGJ Online, Aug. 14, 2014; Mar. 13, 2013).

By late November 2014, however, local media reported official commissioning at Paradip would not occur until late March or early April (OGJ, Dec. 1, 2014, p. 34).

Production from the refinery will be transported domestically via pipeline (20-25%), rail (20-25%), trucking (15-20%), with coastal movement of products (40-50%), including exports, to be shipped through a southern jetty at the complex owned by Paradip Port Trust, the company said.

Configured to process a broad basket of crudes, including less expensive heavy and high-sulfur crude grades, to produce Euro 4 and Euro 5-standard fuels, the refinery has an overall Nelson complexity factor of 12.2.

Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].