State-run Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd plans to invest over Rs 13,000 crore to raise the capacity of its Vizag refinery and set up an aromatic plant there.
It has also set up a $1 billion (about Rs 4,400 crore) corpus for acquisition of oil assets abroad.
"Vizag refinery's capacity is currently being raised to 8.3 million tonnes from 7.5 million tonnes. It will further be raised to 15 million tonnes in next three years at an investment of about Rs 8,000 crore," HPCL Chairman and Managing Director M B Lal told reporters.
HPCL, which is also raising capacity of its Mumbai refinery to 7.9 million tonnes from 5.5 million tonnes, plans to build a new nine million tonnes refinery at Bhatinda in Punjab at an investment of about Rs 13,000 crore.
The upgrading of the Vizag refinery was to produce 83-84 per cent distillates (petrol and diesel) and ultra low sulphur fuel through processing of cheaper sour (high sulphur) crude, he said. Typically, auto fuels make up for 70 per cent of the output.
Besides, the company also plans to invest over Rs 5,500 crore in an aromatic unit at Vizag, based on the naphtha produced at the refinery.
"The project will take 36 months to complete," he said.
M N Prasad, CEO of Prize Petroleum Co Ltd - HPCL's subsidiary for upstream oil and gas exploration business, said the company was scouting with a $1 billion corpus for discovered fields in three to four countries.
HPCL is to hold 50 per cent stake in Prize Petroleum and for the remaining, stake top FIIs have shown interest. "We wanted to garner $60 million by offering 50 per cent stake in Prize but we have offers for $300-400 million," he said.
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