India’s state refiners agree to jointly build new world-scale refinery

India’s state-run refiners plan to build one of the world’s largest refineries on the country’s west coast, Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said in a Twitter post Monday

Indian Oil Corp., the nation’s biggest refiner, will build a 60 MMtpy (1.2 MMbpd) oil refinery in Maharashtra together with Bharat Petroleum Corp., Hindustan Petroleum Corp. and Engineers India. 

The companies will develop the project in two phases, with the first 800,000 bpd facility costing more than 1 trillion rupees ($14.7 billion), according to Pradhan.

The planned refinery will produce gasoline, diesel, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), jet fuel and supply feed stock for petrochemical plants in Maharashtra, Pradhan said. 

Reliance Industries’ twin refineries at Jamnagar in neighboring Gujarat state have a combined capacity of 1.24 MMbpd. That makes that plant currently the world’s biggest refining complex.

“In years to come, India will import products if capacity is not augmented,” Deepak Mahurkar, leader for the oil and gas team at PricewaterhouseCoopers in India, said in an interview with Bloomberg. “Availability of domestic and export markets make room for more capacity.”

A timeline for construction of the refinery was not disclosed. The project may take six to 10 years for design, land acquisitions and construction, Mahurkar told Bloomberg.