Chennai Petro defers unit shutdown to Dec

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Chennai Petroleum Corp has deferred a two-month shutdown of nearly a third of its 190,000 barrels per day (bpd) Manali refinery in southern India to end-December, a director of the company told Reuters.

"There is a delay in receiving necessary equipment from our vendors. That's why we have deferred the planned shutdown to December," the firm's technical director S. Chandrasekaran told Reuters in an interview from Chennai.

The company, a unit of India's largest state-run refiner Indian Oil Corp, had initially planned to shut the 60,000 bpd crude distillation unit in September, which was postponed to October to meet local fuel demand.

"We will shut CDU-III from Dec 28 for 55 days to revamp and raise the capacity to 4 million tonnes per year (80,000 bpd) from 3 million tonnes," Chandrasekaran said.

The revamp will increase the refinery's annual naphtha output by 115,000 tonnes, diesel production by 170,000 tonnes and fuel oil capacity by 330,000 tonnes a year, according to the firm's web site.

Annual production of liquefied petroleum gas will go up by 24,000 tonnes and jet/kerosene by 285,000 tonnes a year after the revamp, it added.

Chandrasekaran said the company planned to revamp its naphtha hydro treater and catalytic reforming unit to increase production of Euro IV compliant, superior-quality gasoline, after a 90-95 day shutdown from mid-December.

"Our petrol octane number will improve to 102 from the current capacity to produce 98 after (the) revamp," he added.

India plans to introduce Euro IV-compliant fuel in some states from April next year, while the rest of the country will switch over to Euro III-compliant fuel.