No plans to increase petrol, diesel prices: Reddy

Even the present refining capacity is in excess of 146 million tonnes of fuel demand, he said.

Listing the new plants, he said Bharat Petroleum willcommission a 6 million tonnes unit at Bina in Madhya Pradeshshortly, while Hindustan Petroleum is building a 9 milliontonnes unit at Bhatinda in Punjab. Also, IOC is constructing a9 million tonnes refinery at Paradip in Orissa.

Built adjacent to IOC''s 15 million tonnes a year Panipatrefinery, the naphtha cracker along with PX-PTA units is thestate-owned firm''s big push into petrochemical business.

The Rs 14,439 crore naphtha cracker complex will produce800,000 tonnes per annum of ethylene and 600,000 tonnes ofpropylene - raw material for manufacturing polymers.

Ethylene and polypropylene produced acts as feed fordownstream polymer units like polypropylene, Linear LowDensity/High Density Polyethylene Swing unit, High DensityPolyethylene unit and Mono Ethylene Glycol unit.

These polymer products are used for manufacturing mouldedplastic containers/barrels, heavy duty films, stretch wrapfilms, shopping bags, automobile parts, pipes and sheets,moulded furniture, yarn and fibre and many other household andindustrial items.

The naphtha cracker will source feedstock naphtha fromIOC''s Koyali, Panipat Mathura refineries.

IOC''s Panipat refiner meets the demand of petroleumproducts not only in Haryana but also of entire North-westregion, including Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal,Chandigarh, Uttaranchal and parts of Rajasthan and Delhi.

IOC has nine refineries with a combined refining capacityof 65.7 million tonnes a year.