29-03-2012

HPCL-Mittal energy announces successful commissioning of its Guru Gobind Singh Refinery

HPCL-Mittal Energy Limited (HMEL) is pleased to announce the successful commissioning of its state-of-the-art 9 Million Metric Tons per annum Guru Gobind Singh Refinery (GGSR) at Phullokari, Bathinda built at a cost of about USD 4 billion. The GGSR refinery is an energy efficient, environmental friendly, high distillate yielding complex, comprising of the following:-
- Single Point Mooring seven kilometres in the sea at Mundra, Gujarat
- Crude Oil Terminal at Mundra
- Cross country pipeline of 1017 km from Mundra to Bathinda connecting various intermediate pumping stations
- Captive Power Plant of 165 MW capacity and
- Petrochemical unit producing Polypropylene

The refinery began refining crude oil in August 2011 and recently achieved commissioning of the entire Project.

Commenting on the successful commissioning, Mr. Lakshmi N Mittal stated, “HPCL Mittal joint venture has established that Public Private Partnership models can succeed. The venture has leveraged strengths of each partner and combined best practices from both sectors. To build a world class asset, we brought leading practices in project management, decision making and corporate governance to the table, executing the project on schedule. The employees and contractors have collaborated very well to deliver on the vision of building a state of the art refinery in India that all stakeholders can be proud of.”

The project has been constructed largely on conventional basis. Engineers India Limited was the Project Management Consultant. The project was financed by a consortium of Indian banks led by State Bank of India.
Commenting on the timely completion of the project in about four years, Mr. S. Roy Choudhury, Chairman HMEL, said, “GGSR has come up in record time. It’s an extraordinary achievement by the HMEL team which has toiled day and night to realize this dream and complete this project. This refinery will help in meeting the growing Indian hydrocarbon demand and more particularly help in bridging the large demand-supply mismatch of petroleum products faced in the northern region of the country. The refinery will boost industrialization of Punjab and the nearby states. The refinery is just the first step in our joint venture with Mittal Energy. The future holds great potential.”

HMEL achieved the first liquid sales in December 2011 with dispatch of kerosene and the first solid sales in February 2012 with sale of petroleum coke.

Mr. Prabh Das, MD & CEO remarked “The success of this project has been possible only due to clear and unambiguous guidance from the Board and sponsors. I would like to thank the HMEL team which has worked professionally and delivered this result in time maintaining the highest standards. We received complete support from the Government of India, State Governments of Punjab, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Haryana. Government of Punjab and the local administration supported the project at every stage which helped in creating an enabling environment and tremendous support from all stakeholders including contractors, suppliers and bankers facilitated in completing the project as planned.”