Kochi Refinery : Moving from good to great

The BPCL Kochi Refinery, embarked on its journey in 1966 with a capacity of 50,000 barrels per day. Formerly known as Cochin Refineries Limited, the refinery was originally established as a joint venture in collaboration with Phillips Petroleum Corporation, USA. It was later renamed as Kochi Refineries Limited, and today, it is a frontline entity as a unit of the Fortune 500 Oil and Gas Maharatna Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited with a capacity of 3,10,000 barrels per day.

Kochi Refinery is located at Ambalamugal, near Kochi in Kerala, and is one of the three Refineries of BPCL, presently having a crude oil refining capacity of 15.5 Million Metric Tonnes per Annum (MMTPA). The product portfolio of the Kochi Refinery today includes petrochemical feedstocks and specialty products in addition to its range of quality fuels.

The products of this fuel based refinery include Liquefied Petroleum Gas, Naphtha, Motor Spirit, Kerosene, Aviation Turbine Fuel, High Speed Diesel and Asphalt. Specialty products for the domestic markets include Benzene, Toluene, Food Grade Hexane, Propylene, Special Boiling Point Spirit, Mineral Turpentine Oil, Sulphur, Petcoke and Hydrogen.

The BPCL Kochi Refinery has been recertified for the highly coveted Integrated Management System (IMS) by M/s Bureau Veritas Certification for having complied with the requirements of best standards and practices in the areas of Quality Management, Environment Management and Occupational Safety and Health Management. By virtue of this, KR is certified to Quality Management System - ISO 9001:2015, Environment Management System - ISO 14001:2015, 45001:2018 and Energy Management System 50001:2018.

With the prestigious Crude Oil receipt facilities consisting of Single Point Mooring (SPM) and associated shore tank farm in place since December 2007, the Kochi refinery is equipped to receive crude oil in Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs). This facility helps the refinery in reducing the freight charges to a great extent, over and above increasing flexibility in crude oil selection. This, thereby, is a major infrastructure facility to accelerate the future growth.

The refinery has facilities to evacuate products to the consuming centres through road, rail and ships through pipelines. All the major industries in the area are connected to the refinery for product receipt. The BPCL installation at Irumpanam is connected to the refinery via pipelines and is the major product distribution centre of the refinery. A 300 km long pipeline connects the refinery to various consumption points in Tamil Nadu such as Coimbatore and Karur.

Post the Integrated Refinery Expansion Project, the refining capacity of KR has been augmented to 15.5 MMTPA with facilities for Euro-IV/VI compliant auto-fuels to meet the growing demand of petroleum products in the Indian market.

This would also upgrade the refinery residue stream to value added distillates and create synergy for future diversification into value added petrochemical products. For niche Petrochemical products, a Propylene Derivative Petrochemical Project was dedicated to the Nation by the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India on 14 February 2021 and the commercial production of niche petrochemicals commenced from 14 April 2021.

The recent achievement of over 80 million accident free man-hours stand testimony to the fact that the prime focus of Kochi Refinery is on safety in everything we do.

From training to retraining, and adhering to international standards in safety practices, both, offsite and onsite, Kochi Refinery has taken it as a mission to make safe living and working a natural mantra of its employees, contract workers, customers and the general public.