The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : 20 MW power project proposed at Manali

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 29, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

20 MW power project proposed at Manali

Staff Reporter

The CPCL plan will be completed in two years

CHENNAI: Chennai Petroleum Corporation Limited (CPCL) has decided to set up a captive 20 mega watt gas turbine power project at its refinery in suburban Manali, a move in tune with the company's emphasis on consolidation of the operations.

The project, to be completed in two years and estimated to cost Rs.140 crores, will make the 9.5-million tonne refinery, under the fold of the Indian Oil Corporation, self-sufficient in terms of the power requirement.

Stating that the board of directors of CPCL approved the project at their meeting here on Monday, A. Kasturi Rangan, director (operations) of the company, said the refinery was already meeting most of its 80 to 85 MW power requirements through captive generation. Towards meeting any unforeseen eventuality and shortfall, it had an arrangement with the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board to get upto 20 MW from the grid.

On completion of the proposed project, the arrangement would not be required and as a result the refinery would save the money it pays to TNEB, he told The Hindu here on Tuesday. He was one of the senior officials at an informal meeting the CPCL managing director, S.V. Narasimhan, who will take over as the director (finance) of Indian Oil Corporation, had with journalists.

The decision of CPCL to enhance the captive power generation comes weeks after the production schedule of the refinery suffered on account of a couple of outages in early last month, leading to complaints of shortfall in supply by some oil marketing companies. Mr. Kasturi Rangan said the situation had been reversed subsequently and the refinery had substantial stocks piled-up.

Mr. Narasimhan said CPCL, which also operates a one million tonne in Nagapattinam, is getting into a consolidation phase following the stabilisation of its operations after the Rs. 2,360-crore expansion and modernisation programme. The projects were basically to improve the overall distillates yield and produce cleaner fuel. The refinery, he said, would also become self-sufficient in terms of meeting its water requirement on completion of a desalination plant. He described the IOC assignment as challenging, as it comes at a time when the oil major had "borrowed heavily" and was burdened by the under-recovery on petroleum products.

According to a CPCL release, its director (technical), R. Sankaran, will hold additional charge as managing director of the company from July 1.

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