Indian Oil Corporation Pushes Back Barauni Refinery Turnaround

---

Researched by Industrial Info Resources India (New Delhi, India)--State-owned Indian Oil Corporation Limited (BSE:530965) (IOCL) (New Delhi) has rescheduled the 45-day planned maintenance and inspection shutdown of the 39,500-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) crude distillation and 12,000-BBL/d delayed coker units at its 6 million-metric-tonne-per-annum Barauni Refinery in Bihar. The turnaround programme, which was slated to begin in June 2012, has now been scheduled for September 2012.

The major overhauling activities that are to be carried out during this maintenance and inspection shutdown include tray replacement, heat exchanger cleaning, column fabrication, desalter modification, desalter grid changeover and heater pigging. The overall cost of the turnaround has been pegged at $19 million.

Apart from the shutdown, capital expenditures have been set aside for coker-stripper changeover and fractionator-overhead changeover. IOCL is carrying out several unit modernization projects to enhance operational efficiency and to increase profitability of its operational facilities in India.

Plans are also afoot to replace the entire visbreaker unit with a delayed coker unit to maximize yield of light and middle distillates and to meet the growing demand of pet coke from different heavy industries. Such projects have been planned for implementation in all the IOCL production facilities in the country.

Situated at Barauni, about 125 kilometers off Patna, the capital city of Bihar, the refinery has a crude refining capacity of 125,650 BBL/d. The refinery, which was commissioned in 1964, had a refining capacity of 1 million metric tonnes per annum. Through the implementation of a series of de-bottlenecking, revamping and expansion projects, the refinery has reached its current production level of 6 million metric tonnes per annum. Besides the primary units, secondary processing facilities, such as the resid fluidized catalytic cracker (RFCC), diesel hydrotreating (DHDT) and sulfur recovery unit (SRU), also were added. The product mix of Barauni refinery comprises naphtha, gasoline, liquid petroleum gas (LPG), diesel, aviation turbine fuel (ATF) and pet coke.

View Plant Profile - 1050617
View Project Report - 300055637 300055647

Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, and eight offices outside of North America, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle™, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities.