Essar Oil, India's second largest private refiner, recently
announced that it has completed its optimisation
project, which has taken the capacity of its Vadinar
Refinery in Gujarat to 20 MMTPA, or 405,000 barrels per
day. The Optimisation Project has been completed four
months ahead of schedule.
Essar Oil had completed the Refinery Expansion Project
to raise its nameplate capacity to 18MMTPA from 10.5
MMTPA with an investment of
9100 crore. For
Optimisation Project, Essar Oil has invested an additional
1,700 crore, taking the total investment at Vadinar
Refinery to approx.
24,000 crore. The company now
accounts for about 10 per cent of India's total refining
capacity.
Essar Oil has set up the refinery at a low capital cost of
$12,746 per barrel, which is about half the global average.
"We are very happy to announce the completion of our
Optimisation Project much ahead of schedule. This is a
testimony to the untiring commitment of the Essar Oil team
as well as teams from other Essar Group companies who
worked seamlessly under highly demanding conditions.
With this commissioning, our capex cycle has now come to
an end and we are fully geared to deliver the value of our
investments to all our stakeholders," said Lalit Gupta, MD &
CEO, Essar Oil.
Under the Optimization Project, Visbreaker Unit has been
converted in to Crude Distillate Unit to process ultra heavy/
tough crude on standalone basis, which will drive significant
improvement in economics. Secondary units required to
support additional throughput along with other supporting
infrastructure (pipelines, tankages, blending facility etc) are
also completed as a part of Optimization Project.
Vadinar Refinery now has the capability to process much
heavier crude diet. The share of ultra heavy crude will go up
to 60 per cent, and as a result, the overall share of heavy and
ultra heavy crude will go upto 80 per cent of the refinery's
total crude basket. The company has already entered into
long-term crude sourcing contract with global suppliers,
including several national oil companies from Latin
America.
In terms of product yield, the Vadinar Refinery now has the
flexibility to produce higher value, high-quality products,
including gasoline (petrol) and gas oil (diesel) conforming to
Euro IV and Euro V norms, that have growing acceptance in
both domestic and international markets. Close to 80 per
cent of its production will now be of valuable light and
middle distillates; and more than 50 per cent of the
production of gas oil (diesel) and gasoline (petrol) will meet
Euro IV and Euro V specifications. EOL is targeting newer
markets such as Australia, New Zealand and north-west
Europe, in addition to countries in the Indian subcontinent
for exporting high-quality fuels. However Essar Oil will
continue to market a majority of its products in the domestic
market.