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MRPL Plans To Spend Rs 31,000 Crore For Expanding Refinery Capacity To 18 MTPA

Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL), the downstream subsidiary of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), plans to invest Rs 31,073 crore to undertake expansion of its flagship 16 Million Tonne Per Annum (MTPA) refinery to 18 MTPA and focus on integration of production streams for petrochemicals like ethylene, propylene and butane, the company said in an application to the environment ministry.

According to company statements, a hybrid configuration with limited increase in crude capacity and petchem products which would meet the boundary conditions of capex requirement, land availability and logistical constraints was envisaged. An in-house hybrid study has been conducted for arriving at the best possible configuration for Petchem addition and capacity expansion project (PACE) by means of low capex, revamps and unit augmentations with fuels conforming to BS VI specifications, for MS and HSD along with petchem products.
The company said the project is currently facing challenges including processing of heavier and sulfur-rich crude, strict environmental regulations, enhanced product specifications for sulfur and aromatics, evolving regional supply and demand dynamics for diesel versus petrol, volatile refining margins, evacuation challenges around petcoke and IMO 2020 specifications, which have necessitated increased capacity and focus on petrochemicals.

MRPL also plans to undertake the capacity expansion of its second crude oil distillation unit (CDU) to 9.7 MTPA from 7.2 MTPA currently, conversion of Visbreaker (VBU) into a 0.7 MTPA CDU for swing operations for processing high sulfur or heavy crude directly and utilization of CDU-I and CDU-III at present capacities. The idea is to utilize maximum crude processing capacity available in primary units.
The company has already started petrochemical production by adding a polypropylene unit and the current refinery complex is integrated to an aromatic complex designed to produce 900,000 Tonne Per Annum (TPA) of paraxylene.

As we focus on MRPL, Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited is a schedule ‘A’ Miniratna, Central Public Sector Enterprise (CPSE) under the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas. MRPL is located in beautiful hilly terrain, north of Mangaluru city, in Dakshina Kannada District of Karnataka State (India). The 15 Million Metric Tonne Refinery has got a versatile design with complex secondary processing units and high flexibility to process Crudes of various API, delivering a variety of quality products.

Source: https://mrpl.co.in/