Indian Oil's Board accords Stage-I approval for setting up India's first Styrene Project at Panipat
The petroleum refining company Indian Oil Corporation Board
The petroleum refining company Indian Oil Corporation Board on Wednesday accorded 'Stage-I approval for the setting up of India's first-ever "Styrene Monomer Project' with a capacity of 387 thousand metric tonnes per annum (TMTPA) at an estimated cost of Rs. 4,495 crore, at IndianOil's Panipat Refinery & Petrochemical Complex in Haryana.
The Project would be commissioned by 2026-27. Styrene is used for the production of Poly Styrene, Paints & Coatings / Acrylic, Unsaturated Polyester Resins, Elastomers such as Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS), Styrene-Butadiene Rubber (SBR), etc.
Presently India's Styrene consumption is around 900 TMTPA and the demand is expected to increase consistently over the next 15-20 years. The proposed Styrene Project will address this issue to a larger extent and it will also reduce import dependency of the country substantially, resulting in considerable forex savings of about Rs. 3650 crore (USD 500 million) per annum.
There is no domestic Styrene capacity in India and the entire demand is met through imports from Singapore, Middle East and Southeast Asia causing a lot of inconvenience to the domestic Styrene downstream industry. Availability of Styrene domestically is expected to accelerate the growth of downstream Industry leading to expansion of the industry as well as create employment opportunities.
Earlier, the Panipat Refinery Expansion Project from the existing 15 MMTPA to 25 MMTPA was approved by IndianOil's Board in Feb '2021 with a CapEx of Rs. 32946 Crore. As part of the Expansion Project, a new high severity Fluidized Catalytic Cracking Unit (FCCU) of 2.5 MMTPA capacity, based on IndianOil's flagship INDMAX technology would be set up to maximize LPG production and basic petrochemical building blocks — Propylene and Ethylene. There is a Propylene potential of around 514 KTA of in the Project, which would be utilized for the production of Polypropylene (PP) through a new PP unit. The Styrene Project envisages utilizing the Ethylene potential from the INDMAX Unit and Benzene that is already being produced at the Panipat Complex.