BPCL

Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi dedicated Bharat Petroleum Corporation’s Integrated Refinery Expansion Complex and laid the foundation stone of the Petrochemical Complex at Kochi Refinery on 27 January 2019. This marks the successful culmination of the Integrated Refinery Expansion Project (IREP) conceptualized to transform Kochi Refinery in to a ‘world class’ Refinery with the largest refining capacity among Public Sector refineries and the foray in to the next stage of development of petrochemicals.

He did the honours in the distinguished presence of the Governor of Kerala, Justice P Sathasivam, Chief Minister of Kerala, Shri Pinarayi Vijayan, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas and Minister for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Shri Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Minister for Tourism, Shri Alphons Kannanthanam, Members of Parliament Prof K V Thomas and Prof Richard Hay and Member of Legislative Assembly, Shri VP Sajeendran at a grand ceremony in Kochi. On his visit to Kochi Refinery, the Prime Minister visited the most modern, state of the art, Main Control Room (MCR) of BPCL Kochi Refinery where he was received by the Secretary of Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, Dr. M M Kutty, Chairman and Managing Director of BPCL, Shri D Rajkumar and Executive Director I/c of BPCL Kochi Refinery, Shri Prasad K Panicker. He was accompanied by the Governor, Chief Minister and the Petroleum Minister. BPCL Director (Refineries), Shri R Ramachandran received the  Prime Minister, Chief Minister and Petroleum Minister at the venue when he arrived to dedicate the IREP Complex.

View full event video : https://bit.ly/2GlFDep

IREP was aimed at increasing the refining capacity of Kochi Refinery from 9.5 MMTPA to 15.5 MMTPA and modernization of refinery to produce auto-fuels complying with Euro-IV/Euro-V specifications. The units of IREP are designed to be flexible enough to process high Sulphur crudes, which will fetch a higher margin.

Capacity expansion is facilitated by installing a new state of the art Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) of 10.5 MMTPA, which is the single largest Crude unit among PSU refineries.  Delayed Coker unit (DCU) of IREP serve the purpose of converting the high sulphur low value bottom products generated from existing refinery and IREP units to petcoke.

Apart from the new CDU and DCU, associated process units like Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit (FCCU), VGO Hydro-treater (VGO HDT), Diesel Hydro-treater (DHDT) Sulfur Recovery Unit (SRU), Tail Gas Treating Unit (TGTU), NHT/ISOM (revamp), Hydrogen Generation Unit (HGU) along with matching Utilities and Off-site facilities are the part of the project. The Hydrogen Generation Unit is implemented on BOO (Build- Own- Operate) mode.

The last unit of the project was Mechanically completed by 31 March 2017, within the approved cost and time. The units were commissioned sequentially and the last unit, ISOM unit, was commissioned on 17 September 2017

The Project had generated large employment opportunities, (as many as 20000 labours were working during the peak construction period) as well as all round economic growth and development in the region. The Propylene produced from the IREP- FCCU will be the feed stock for the proposed Petrochemical Complex coming adjacent to the refinery. The IREP is the largest investment of BPCL at a location and also is the single largest investment in the state of Kerala. The enormous size and number makes the project different from several other projects.

A three tier safety system including client, consultant and contractor ensured that the jobs were executed as per the motto ‘Safety first, Progress must’. About 300 safety officers at site oversee the systems, procedures and execution of jobs. More than 150 million man hours have been completed at IREP site with about 20000 labourers working every day.

Planting of saplings for developing a green belt of 20,000 trees around the project site have been completed. Liquid effluents from all the units of IREP are being converted to De-mineralized water by employing state- of –the-art –technology and being used as feed water in boiler. Government of Kerala provided proactive support to the project throughout its execution period including financial incentives.