Commissioning of Cuddalore refinery by early 2014: NOCL

NEW DELHI: Nagarjuna Oil Corp Ltd (NOCL) today said it has pushed back commissioning of its Rs 11,500 crore oil refinery at Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu by one-and-a-half years to end-2013 or early 2014.

Company Managing Director and CEO S Ramasundaram said the construction on the 6 million tons a year project was hit by cyclone last year.

"We are targeting commissioning in end-2013 or early 2014," he told reporters on sidelines of Petrotech 2012 conference here.

The refinery, as per the original plans, was to start processing crude oil in December 2011 and achieve full commissioning by March 2012.

Oil trader Trafigura in April bought a 24 per cent stake in the refinery and replaced UK's BP as principal crude oil supplier.

Ramasundaram said NOCL may double the capacity of the refinery by early 2016.

Refinery, located 200-km south of Chennai on the east coast, will have associated marine infrastructure including single point mooring (for crude oil handling in very large crude carriers) and jetty (for finished product handling). It will have high complexity factor designed to take advantage of processing heavy and sour crude oil.

Work at the refinery site commenced in 2006, and will produce Euro IV and Euro V auto fuels, LPG and bitumen. The project site is spread over 1600 acres, which includes 300 acres of greenbelt.