Deora: Strict stand

Jaipur, Feb. 3: The Centre has turned down the Rajasthan government’s proposal of a petroleum refinery.

Union oil minister Murli Deora today said the project was not feasible. Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot, however, said the state government was ready with concessions for ONGC to set up the refinery.

The refusal means Scotland’s Cairn Energy will have to process the crude from its Rajasthan fields outside the state.

Deora will inaugurate tomorrow a pipeline to carry oil from Cairn’s Mangala fields to to Salaya in Gujarat.

Rajasthan gave permission to Cairn for the pipeline only after the Edinburgh-based entity agreed to the state government’s proposal to record the sales of crude within the state and not in Gujarat.

If the sales were reported in Gujarat, the Rajasthan government would have lost revenues.

Cairn will begin production from Mangala in the second quarter of 2009-10.

Its three Rajasthan fields —Bhagyam, Aishwarya and Mangala — are expected to contribute almost 20 per cent to India’s domestic crude output by the end of the decade.

Earlier, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi had commissioned one of the biggest pipelines in the country, built by Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited. The Mundra-Delhi pipeline will carry petrol, diesel and kerosene from the western coast to the northern states.

It will transport the products of HPCL as well as of other firms such as Indian Oil Corporation and Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd.

The 1054km pipeline was built at a cost of Rs 1,757 crore and took 36 months.

Reliance gas

Petroleum secretary R.S. Pandey said gas production from Reliance Industries’ KG–D6 basin will start from the first week of March.