Bengal fate
It is not known whether HPL and TCG will continue to pursue the Bengal project. A comment seeking the fate of it remained unanswered till the time of going to the press.
The Bengal government, through its investment promotion agency West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC), holds a 9.18 per cent stake in HPL. It also has a seat on the board of the company. However, TCG is in the driver’s seat at HPL after Chatterjee bought out WBIDC’s stake in two tranches for around Rs 1,300 crore. TCG now holds over 72 per cent stake in the company.
Haldia Petrochemical was jointly promoted by TCG, Tata Group and the Bengal government under the leadership of chief ministers Jyoti Basu and Buddhadeb Bhattacharya of the Left Front.
However, the relationship between the two principal promoters, state government and TCG, soured during the Left rule, leading to multiple court cases.
After chief minister Banerjee took over the administration, a conscious effort was made to untangle the mess, leading to the WBIDC ceding majority control and ownership.
It is likely that the Mamata Banerjee government would pursue to keep the project in Bengal. But for that to happen, the state will have to provide land, which may be hard to find in Haldia. It appears that building the refinery and aromatic complex makes more sense in Bengal as HPL and MCC PTA (another TCG company), that use refinery byproduct naphtha and paraxylene, are both based in Haldia.
The Telegraph
Odisha has “accorded approval” to an integrated refinery-cum-petrochemical complex of Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd (HPL), three years after the company had publicly announced a similar plan for Bengal.
A committee headed by Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik approved the Rs 28,700-crore project ($4.05 billion), which will involve a refinery to produce paraxylene and purified terephthalic acid (PTA), a statement from Industrial Promotion and Investment Corporation of Odisha Limited (Ipicol) said.
The intent of the investment, dubbed as the country’s largest domestic investment proposal by Ipicol, was received during the Make In Odisha conclave held in November 2018. A formal proposal was submitted on March 1, 2019.
The statement from Odisha’s premier investment promotion body said land for the project has been identified near the upcoming Subarnarekha port, which is being built by Tata Steel.
In 2016, Purnendu Chatterjee, chairman of HPL and The Chatterjee Group, had unveiled a Rs 20,000-crore plan for a refinery as a backward integration for the petrochemical complex at Haldia. A year later, the state government informed a member of the Assembly that TCG had made a formal proposal.
During a review meeting in July 2017, chief minister Banerjee was publicly told by an HPL official that the company needed a 2,500-acre land for the refinery even as the state agreed to provide only 1,500 acres. Nearly 18 months have passed since then, the company is yet to receive any land parcel.
