India’s Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), a major state-owned refiner, plans to invest around $4 billion to expand a refinery joint venture in India that is partly owned by Oman, a report said.

Oman Oil Company (OOC), the wholly Omani government owned energy and strategic investment entity, has a 26% stake in Oman Oil Refineries (BORL), a massive refinery complex located at Bina in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, according to the Oman Observer report.

BPCL claims a 49 per cent stake in the joint venture, with the rest taken by a number of Indian financial institutions.

BPCL will initially invest INR3,500 crore ($550 million) in boosting the capacity of the Bina plant from the current 6 million tonnes to 7.8 million tonnes annually by 2018, BPCL’s chairman and managing director S Varadarajan was quoted as saying in the report, which cited the Indian media.

A further investment of INR 18,000-20,000 crore is envisaged in the next phase of its expansion, aimed at raising capacity to 15 million tonnes in the next 5-6 years, Varadarajan said.

Oman Oil Company (OOC) has no plans to participate in the expansion, he added.

Source: Trade Arabia