Jaipur, June 26 (IANS) Rajasthan is hopeful of an oil refinery coming up in Barmer district even as state-run energy major Oil & Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) has decided to shelve the project terming it uneconomical.
“We had a meting in Delhi with ONGC officials when they gave us a commitment that the refinery would be set up, so we do not have any reasons not to believe them,” Rajasthan Mines Secretary Ashok Singhvi said Tuesday.
Ranked 402nd in the Fortune Global list, ONGC holds 30 percent in Cairn’s Rajasthan fields. Cairn is to begin production at the Rajasthan fields in the first quarter of 2009 with an expected peak output of 150,000 barrels per day (7.5 million tons).
ONGC chairman and managing director R.S. Sharma Monday said in New Delhi that the firm had no plans to set up a refinery in Rajasthan and that the only decision pending was on a pipeline to transport the crude discovered by Cairn in Barmer, over 550 km from here.
“The economics to set up the proposed refinery was turning out to be worse. So now the administrative ministry says only a pipeline will come up and decision would be taken on June 27,” said Sharma.
Singhvi, however, said: “During the meeting we did agree on evacuation of oil till a decision is taken on the refinery because any delay would have hit our as well as the central government’s revenue earnings.”