Kolkata, Sept 04: Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) will invest around Rs 400 crore to make the Haldia refinery in the eastern region viable, company chairman M S Ramachandran has said. The Haldia refinery was not viable due to high transportation cost as large crude carriers were not able to come to Haldia since it was a Riverine Port, Ramachandran told reporters here yesterday.

He said that the only solution to the problem lay in constructing a pipeline from Paradip in Orissa to Haldia, for which the IOC board had already approved the project.
After this was done, the refining capacity would be increased from six million tonnes to 7.5 million tonnes, Ramachandran said, adding petroleum products from haldia would then be exported.

He said that gross margins at most of the refineries in the country were coming down.
Bureau Report