India IOC Panipat plant to hit 300,000 bpd in 10 days

State-run Indian Oil Corp's northern India Panipat refinery should be operating at 300,000 barrels per day within 10 days, the company's head of refineries, BN Bankapur, said on Thursday.                                          

Over the weekend the company restarted its upgraded crude unit and a delayed coker, he said.                                           

"We will restart the hydrocracker in the next three to four days and in the next seven to 10 days the refinery will start operating at full capacity," he said. 

In early September, IOC shut a 120,000 bpd crude unit, a 1.7 million tonnes a year hydrocracker and a 2.4 million tonnes a year delayed coker unit at the Panipat refinery for a revamp. 

Due to the shutdwon of the crude unit, IOC had shut its huge naphtha cracker.                                           

"We have started the naphtha cracker and in next 15 days it should start operating at full capacity," Bankapur said.                                        

IOC's naphtha cracker was commissioned in March and can produce 850,000 tonnes of ethylene and 600,000 tonnes of propylene per year.

The cracker, which consumes 2.4 million tonnes of naphtha a year at full rate, would get supplies from IOC's Gujarat, Mathura and Panipat plants.

With the expansion of the Panipat plant, IOC group's total refining capacity has risen to 1.294 million bpd.