(Live Mint)
Leveraging the new refinery capacity being added by state-run oil companies, India is set to build new petrochemical complexes that will help to develop the country as a polymer hub like Houston, Jurong Island or Shanghai, the oil ministry stated on Saturday.
“The government is planning to set up petrochemical clusters in Eastern, Western and Southern India to spur the growth of the sector with a view to meeting the increasing demand for polymers and specialty chemicals across diverse industrial segments,” the ministry stated quoting oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan who inaugurated a petrochemicals conclave in Gandhinagar on Saturday.
With surplus refinery capacity, large quantities of refinery by-product naphtha, a liquid hydrocarbon used as building block in the petrochemical industry, have been freed up for value addition, Pradhan said. “With the synergy of feedstock availability, public sector oil and gas companies have invested in a big way in world-scale petrochemical complexes, and will continue to do so,” the statement said quoting the minister.
