Indian Oil Corp which is the biggest refiner of India has been planning to start producing gasoline at its Paradip refinery before the year ends.

During late 2015, the IOC has started up the 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) Paradip refinery and has a continuous catalytic reformer (CCR) that turns naphtha into gasoline.

In March, the CCR was commissioned but was functional only for a week on account of compressor problems, prompting IOC to export the naphtha volumes.

Sanjiv Singh, the executive director of IOC’s refineries division has said on the sidelines of the APPEC conference in Singapore that “The (Paradip) refinery is designed not to make naphtha but we have problems with one of the units. We do not want to export naphtha. It is heavy losses for us.”

He further said that “We want to convert naphtha into gasoline and petrochemicals,” and added that he expects the problem at a compressor to be resolved in about a month’s time but it will still take a few weeks to clear out the naphtha stocks.

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