Excelsior Correspondent
NEW DELHI, Nov 30: Dr M Veerappa Moily Union Petroleum Minister, dedicated to nation India’s first state-of-the-art Styrene Butadiene Rubber (SBR) Plant at Panipat, Haryana in the presence of Minister of State for Petroleum & Natural Gas & Textiles Panabakka Lakshmi and other dignitaries.
Dr Moily described this is as a milestone achievement by Indian Oil Corporation, India’s largest company to visualise and implement such a project which will provide India the product E-SBR for which nation was looking at other countries. This will result in substantial amount of savings of foreign exchange.
He congratulated and thanked Marubeni and TSRC for coming to India and joining hands with IndianOil in setting up of this state-of-the-art SBR Plant in Panipat. SBR is suitable to produce various products like tyres, conveyor belts, hose, shoe soles, industrial goods, etc with superior processing properties like flexing resistance, tear and cracking resistance, improved abrasive resistance, etc.
The project is considered as a path breaking venture of national importance as there is no operating capacity in the country and the entire domestic demand is met through imports. IndianOil Corporation Limited, M/s TSRC Corporation, Taiwan and M/s Marubeni Corporation, Japan are Joint Venture Partners in this prestigious project implemented under the banner of Indian Synthetic Rubber Ltd (ISRL). It is based on Butadiene available from IndianOil’s Panipat Naphtha Cracker Complex.
Completed at an estimated cost of Rs.958 crore, the project is designed to produce 120 KTA of high quality styrene Butadiene Rubber which is currently imported for manufacture of automotive tyres and other applications. Commissioning of this prestigious project would significantly contribute to foreign exchange savings and also generation of employment opportunities in the State of Haryana.
Dr Moily also expressed satisfaction that IndianOil has made full use of the liberalisation and globalisation by expanding its wings and has emerged as the largest commercial organisation of the country.
Hailing the growth of oil sector, he recalled that, India has been one of the first countries to set up Oil Refinery as early as 1901, however, further capacity addition only started after independence. For years, the sector faced many challenges like Capacity Addition, Augmenting Supply Sources, crude handling, logistics, process flexibility, Energy Efficiency, Value Addition and Product Quality Improvement. Industry in the past has added significant capacity through innovative low cost augmentation to mitigate the fund constraint. Till the end of 20th Century, country remained deficit in refining. With delicensing of Refining Sector, the country’s refining capacity has leapfrogged from a modest 62 MMTPA in 1998 to about 215 MMTPA at present, comprising of 22 refineries – 17 under Public Sector, 2 under Joint Sector and 3 under private sector.
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