HPCL-Mittal Energy opens $4bn oil refinery in India

HPCL-Mittal Energy (HMEL), a joint venture of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) and Singapore’s Mittal Energy, has opened the $4bn Guru Gobind Singh Refinery (GGSR) at Bathinda in Punjab, India.

HPCL and Mittal Energy each hold a 49% stake in the refinery, while the remaining 2% is held by Indian financial institutions.

S. Roy Choudhury, HMEL chairman, said: "This refinery will help in meeting the growing Indian hydrocarbon demand and more particularly help in bridging the large demand-supply mismatch of petroleum products faced in the northern region of the country."

The GGSR refinery, with a capacity of 9 million metric tons per annum, features a crude oil terminal, a captive power plant with a capacity of 165MW and a petrochemical unit producing polypropylene.

The facility also comprises a 1,017km cross country pipeline that will carry oil from Mundra to Bathinda and has been built through Gujarat, Rajasthan and Haryana, connecting various intermediate pumping stations.

Construction of the refinery began in 2008, and the facility started refining crude oil in August 2011, with the first sales of kerosene and petroleum coke in February 2012.

 

Image: The refinery has a capacity of nine million tons. Photo courtesy of: HPCL-Mittal Energy.