Union Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas has approved a revised project cost of Rs. 28,026 Crore for the ongoing Numaligarh Refinery Expansion Project to increase refining capacity from 3 MMTPA to 9 MMTPA.
This will be a single largest investment in North-East India.
The original planned configuration of the upcoming 6 MMTPA has been reconfigured and improved to make it Petrochemical ready, focusing on upgradation of Refinery residue by using new technology of Ebullated Bed Residue Hydro-Treater along with high severity Petro-FCC unit.
According to NRL with adoption of State of the Art technology in this configuration and addition of extremely complex schemes like residue hydrocracking, the refinery will be able to process heavier Crude Oil and maximize production of distillates. This adoption of technology led to an increase in the project cost from Rs. 22,594 Crore to Rs. 28,026 Crore.
NRL added the intervening period between the original planning of the Refinery Configuration for expansion and the present market scenario, NRL has tapped the opportunity of maturity of Residue Upgradation Technology and certainty of availability of Natural Gas to revise this configuration. The configuration and unit design is targeted to achieve best in class energy efficiency on global energy benchmarking. With increased distillate yield, NRL will also be able to increase its LPG production, thereby completely eliminating LPG deficit in the North-Eastern region.
