Union petroleum and natural gas minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Thursday expressed hope of reviving the stalled West Coast Refinery project, which if implemented, will be the largest in the world. The over Rs 3 lakh crore-project was approved when the BJP-Shiv Sena government headed by Devendra Fadnavis was in power in the state.
At that time, the government had acquired some portion of the 15,000 acres of land needed for the 60-million-tonne per annum project. However, with the change of guard in the state after the 2019 polls and an alliance of the Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party-Congress coming to power under Uddhav Thackeray, the project was shelved.
Addressing an industry event on the energy technologies here, the minister said that though no concrete proposal has come to him yet from the state or from investors, he expects the project to be revived. “In one part of a country, there was a talk of a very major refinery being set up on the west coast. Investors were also ready but the earlier state government was busy in its own things,” Puri said.
