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ONGC may commission mini-refinery in AP

Archana Chaudhary

MUMBAI, July 5

Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (ONGC) is likely to commission its first well-head refinery at Tatipaka, Andhra Pradesh, next month.

ONGC, the country's flagship exploration company, has already tied up with Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd to market products from this 300-tonne per day capacity refinery in the Krishna-Godavari basin.

This will be the first time that the upstream major will process its own crude to produce diesel, a senior official told Business Line.

``This way we save money as we had to spend a lot more on transporting crude all the way to Vizag,'' the official said. `` Although the refining capacity of Tatipaka is not very impressive compared to other refineries, considering it is a well-head, we h ave tested our refining skills on a pilot scale,'' he said.

The company used to transfer crude from Tatipaka, its onshore oil and gas field in AP, to Yanam in Pondicherry. From here, the crude was taken to Hindustan Petroleum's Vizag refinery.

ONGC has been producing LPG at its gas fractification plant near here since 1981 and began kerosene production since 1998. The exploration major has also been exporting naphtha since November last year and has been marketing products like heavy cut resid ue, NGL and LPG since April 1998.

The Tatipaka refinery will produce about 90 tonne of naphtha per day apart from the daily production of 75 tonne superior kerosene oil, 45 tonne high-speed diesel and 35 tonne of residual crude oil similar to furnace oil.

The EPC contract for its Tatipaka refinery was undertaken by the Kolkata-based National Insulated Cable Company (Nicco), the bid package for which was prepared by the Institute of Oil and Gas Technology at a cost of Rs 30 crore.