Bathinda refinery to be inaugurated in April

Chandigarh, March 29 (IANS) The Rs.21,500 crore Guru Gobind Singh Refinery near Bathinda town in southwest Punjab will be formally inaugurated next month, a senior official said here Thursday.

The project, a joint venture of the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) and Mittal Energy Investment Pte Ltd, Singapore, a group company of steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, has become fully operational.

"The refinery would be inaugurated in mid-April, changing the industrial scenario of whole Punjab," said Prabh Das, the refinery's managing director and chief executive officer, after meeting Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal here.

The refinery, located over 250 km from here, is the largest investment in Punjab since independence, Das said.

He said that it was matter of record that the refinery, where construction started in 2008, has started refining mineral oil in August 2011, less than 48 months later.

He said that with the cooperation of the Punjab government, the company could construct crude oil terminal and 1,017-km pipeline between Gujarat's Mundra port and Bathinda in record time of 27 months.

Badal said that with the refinery becoming fully operational, a number of tertiary industries would be benefitted in the Bathinda area. Besides, hundreds of youth would get employment in the project, he said.