IOC sends first consignment from Paradip oil refinery

New Delhi: State-owned Indian Oil Corp (IOC) Tuesday said it has started commercial production of fuel from its Rs 34,555 crore Paradip oil refinery in Odisha, sending out first consignment of diesel and LPG.

IOC began processing crude oil at the 15 million ton a year Paradip refinery in April-end and has since then commissioned various units of the mammoth refinery one by one.

"The first consignment of products from IOC's Paradip refinery comprising of High Speed Diesel, Superior Kerosene and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) was dispatched on November 22, 2015," the company said in a regulatory filing.

While crude oil processing began seven months back, some of the products require further processing in secondary units, which IOC commissioned in stages.

"The consignment is considered a significant milestone for Paradip Refinery and IOC is now ready to supply products in small quantities from its 15 million tons per annum state-of-the-art Paradip Refinery," the statement said.

IOC said the whole refinery complex will become fully operational in an integrated manner in the near future. It, however, did not give a date for full commissioning.

At the time of taking first crude oil, IOC had on April 27 stated that the whole refinery is likely to take about 6-8 months for becoming fully operational.

The refinery is designed to process broad basket of crude, including cheaper high sulphur heavy crudes, and has an overall Nelson complexity factor of 12.2.

It is capable of producing Euro-IV/Euro-V quality transportation fuel.

Once fully operational, the refinery will produce 700,000 tonnes of LPG, 200,000 tonnes of propylene a year, 3.8 million tonnes of petrol, 380,000 tonnes of ATF and 6.9 million tonnes of diesel.

Officials said the distillate yield from the refinery is expected to be best in class, with 81.1 per cent with no black oil production.

Paradip will be IOC's eighth refinery in the country and is expected to help the company scale up its refining capacity to 69.2 million tonnes from the current 54.2 million tonnes per annum.

Paradip, which was initially planned to begin operations in 2012 but a flurry of problems including environmental issues and natural calamities delayed the commissioning, will reach 80 per cent of the installed capacity before end of 2016-17 fiscal.

The Paradip refinery is the most sophisticated of IOC's 11 units.

HPCL-Mittal Energy Ltd's 9 million ton Bathinda refinery in Punjab was the last refinery commissioned in India three years ago.