To expand its Koyali oil refinery in Gujarat, Indian Oil Corp (IOC) will invest about Rs 8,000 crore. The State-owned oil refinery wanted to expand the Koyali unit to 18 million tonne per annum by 2016-17. The expansion from 13.7 million tonne will lead to improvement in distillate yield thereby enabling production of more value added products from the refinery, a company statement said.    

IOC Gujarat Refinery Executive Director Gautam Roy said in the statement that the increase in the high sulphur crude processing capability will lead to improvement in refinery margins and profitability of the company. IOC commissioned a 3 million tonne a year refinery at Koyali in Gujarat in 1965. Over the years, the capacity of the refinery, which later came to be known as Gujarat refinery, has gradually been increased to 13.7 million tonne per annum.    

The refinery is setting up a new gas turbine that will provide ensured power to the unit and augment its operational reliability. The expansion will help the unit raise its processing of high sulphur crude, which are cheaper. High sulphur crude oil made up for 51.5 per cent of the crude the refiner processed in 2012-13 and in first quarter (Q1) of current fiscal this has already gone up to 54.4 per cent.