Indian Oil Corp. (IOC; New Delhi) plans to invest about Rs700 billion– Rs800 billion ($15.5 billion-$17.7 billion) in its petrochemicals business by 2022, Siddhartha Mitra, general manager/petrochemicals at IOC tells CW. The company also aims to substantially increase the share of the petrochemicals business’ revenues in the total revenues of the company by 2022. The petrochemicals business of IOC, which had revenues of nearly Rs38 billion in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2010, accounted for only 1.6%-1.7% of the total revenues of IOC. The company expects that by the end of the current fiscal year, the revenues from the petrochemicals business will rise to Rs90 billion and account for about 4% of the total revenues of IOC, mainly due to the naphtha cracker at Panipat, India that became operational earlier this year. And by 2022, revenues from the petrochemicals business, is expected to account for 15% of the total revenues of the company, Mitra says. The Indian petrochemicals industry has seen a growth of about 14%/year-15%/year during the last fiver years, and this double-digit growth is likely to stay over the next several years, Mitra says. The planned investments of up to Rs800 billion will include several projects, Mitra says. One of the projects being planned is the second phase of the cracker complex at Paradip, India, and it will be a joint venture with a global major, Mitra says. The study for the mixed-feed cracker will begin in 2012, and the cracker will come online in 2016-2017. The potential partner for the project is currently being evaluated, Mitra says. Several other new projects in the petrochemicals business are being evaluated, but the company did not provide details. The previously announced plans to build a purified terephthalic acid (PTA) plant and a para-xylene plant at the company's refinery at Koyali, India is progressing well, Mitra says. The detailed feasibility study for the two plants, which will involve a total investmentof about Rs50 billion, has been completed. The 370,000-m.t./yearpara-xylene plant will use UOP technology and the technology selection for the 600,000-m.t./year PTA plant is in progress. The technology from three suppliers – Invista, Mitsubishi Chemical, and Samsung Engineering- are being evaluated and the selection will be finalized in the next two months, Mitra says.
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