MOSCOW (MRC) -- State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp today said the talks to sell stake in long-delayed mega petrochemical plant at Dahej in Gujarat to Kuwait's Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC) remain inconclusive, as per The Economic Times.
PIC, a subsidiary of state-run Kuwait Petroleum Corp (KPC), was in talks to buy at least 26 per cent stake in ONGC Petro-additions Ltd, the firm that is building the Rs 27,122 crore project.
"Discussion had been held with PIC, Kuwait for equity participation in OPaL project up to APril 2015. However, no recent developments on this front have taken place for the last two months and the discussion remain inconclusive as of date," ONGC said in a regulatory filing.
ONGC had in 2006 set up ONGC Petro-additions Ltd (OPaL) for building a mega petrochemical complex at Dahej in Gujarat. The plant was originally planned to come on stream by end 2012 but delays have led to two revisions in completion dates.
Officials said the plant was mechanically completed by April 2015 and one of the units commissioned in June. Other units will be sequentially commissioned and the entire plant would start operations by fourth quarter of 2015 calendar year.
The 1.1 million tonnes plant was in 2006 estimated to cost Rs 12,440 crore. But since then the project cost has been revised thrice - first to 15,870 crore in end 2008, then to Rs 19,535 crore in June 2010 and to Rs 21,396 crore in August 2012. The project cost has undergone further cost-escalation and completion cost is now estimated at Rs 27,122 crore.
As MRC wrote previously, in July 2015, ONGC subsidiary Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals (MRPL) approved a proposal to merge ONGC Mangalore Petrochemicals (OMPL) with itself. This step is expected to consolidate the petrochemical business of state-owned upstream major Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), leading to the rationalization of costs across petrochemical product stream and giving MRPL access to a wider range of products and flexibility to optimize its gross refinery margin (GRM). ONGC holds almost 72% in MRPL. In OMPL, ONGC holds 49% stake while 51% is held by MRPL.
OMPL is a green field petrochemical project at the Mangaluru Special Economic Zone, adjacent to MRPL’s own 15 mln mtpa refining and petrochemical complex. It comprises an aromatic complex for production of Paraxylene and Benzene. The complex is designed to produce 0.9 mln mtpa of Paraxylene and 0.3 mln mtpa of Benzene.
MRC