Moily dedicates first styrene butadiene rubber plant at Panipat to nation

Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister M Veerappa Moily dedicated India’s first state-of-the-art Styrene Butadiene Rubber (SBR) plant at Panipat, Haryana to the nation today in the presence of Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas and Textiles Panabakka Lakshmi and other dignitaries.

Moily described this is as a milestone achievement by Indian Oil Corporation, India’s largest company to visualise and implement such a project, which he said would provide the product E-SBR indigenously.

“This will result in substantial amount of savings of foreign exchange,” he said.

He congratulated and thanked Marubeni and TSRC for coming to India and joining hands with Indian Oil in setting up the plant in Panipat.

SBR is suitable to produce various products like tyres, conveyor belts, hose, shoe soles, industrial goods, etc with superior processing properties like flexing resistance, tear and cracking resistance, improved abrasive resistance, etc.

The project is considered as a path breaking venture of national importance as there is no operating capacity in the country and the entire domestic demand is met through imports.

Indian Oil Corporation Limited, M/s.TSRC Corporation, Taiwan and M/s.Marubeni Corporation, Japan are Joint Venture Partners in this prestigious project implemented under the banner of Indian Synthetic Rubber Ltd (ISRL).

It has been completed at an estimated cost of Rs.958 crore. The project is designed to produce 120 KTA of high quality styrene butadiene rubber which is currently imported for manufacture of automotive tyres and other applications.

Commissioning of this prestigious project would significantly contribute to foreign exchange savings and also generation of employment opportunities in the state of Haryana.

Dr Moily also expressed satisfaction that Indian Oil has made full use of the liberalisation and globalisation by expanding its wings and has emerged as the largest commercial organisation of the country.

Hailing the growth of oil sector, he recalled that, India has been one of the first countries to set up oil refinery as early as 1901, but added that further capacity addition only started after independence.

The minister also informed that India is already on the POL export map. The country exported 63.4 MMT during 2012-13 (provisional figure), registering a growth of five per cent over 2011-12.

India’s refining sector is also set for major capacity expansion and debottlenecking of its existing refineries. The product yields are also being realigned to meet ever increasing environmental norms for auto/industrial fuels and projected demand for various distillates and also to improve the GRMs.

In upstream sector, Moily underlined that his task is clearly cut out.

He said: “I have started working towards strengthening the E and P sector, removing bottlenecks, improving investor sentiment and bringing in necessary reforms so that we gradually move towards self reliance.”

He stressed that his vision wasto achieve import independence by the year 2030. (ANI)