Kuwait Petroleum to set up integrated oil refinery in India

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New Delhi, Dec 6: Kuwait Petroleum Corp (KPC) announced on Thursday that it was contemplating setting up of a multi-billion dollar world scale integrated oil refinery cum petrochemical complex in India.

Discussions on forging an alliance with an Indian partner for this project were held between KPC’s senior brass and the managements of Reliance and Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) over the last two days. Chief executive of KPC, Saad Al-Shuwaib met Reliance Industries officials in Mumbai on Wednesday and called on petroleum minister Murli Deora on Thursday followed by a meeting with the IOC board over lunch.

Shuwaib said his company was not keen to invest in an existing refinery project but will go for a new grassroot project in India. “We have talked to RIL and IOC officials. We intend to finalise a partner as soon as possible,” he said.

The size of the oil refinery project could be anywhere around 12-15 mtpa along with a chemical plant with an annual capacity of one million tonne. The Kuwaiti national oil company would process Kuwati crude oil in the refinery and plans to export fuels and chemicals from the proposed plants in India.

After his meeting with Al-Shuwaib, Deora said KPC may be interested in IOC’s proposed 300,000 barrels per day refinery at Ennore in Tamil Nadu. IOC and its subsidiary CPCL are planning investment of over $6 billion by 2015-16 in setting up the refinery-cum-petrochemical complex at Ennore, for which a request for 3,500-4000 acres of land has already been placed with the state government.

Shuwaib said KPC was not looking to buy stakes in existing Reliance refineries. The proposed greenfield refinery project will be an export-oriented unit and will use the Kuwati crude. Kuwait Petroleum will be increasing its crude oil exports to India once the project is finalised.KPC managing director (international marketing) Abdullatif A. Al-Houti said KPC withdrew from IOC’s 150,000 barrels per day Paradip project some years ago as it was interested only in an integrated refinery-cum-petrochemical complex.

“Now, they have changed the configuration of the project (to include a petrochemical plant and doubling capacity). We are looking into that (too).”