New Delhi, April 27: Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) has started processing crude at its Paradip refinery and will fully commission the 15-million-tonne unit over the next six to eight months.

"IOC has started the process of commissioning its 15-million-tonne-per-annum (mtpa) Paradip refinery. Crude processing has been started in atmospheric and vacuum unit and products such as LPG, naphtha, kerosene and gas oil are produced from the unit," Sanjiv Singh, director (refineries), at IOC, said.

Singh said some of these products would require further processing in secondary units, which are also gearing up to go on stream.

The whole complex is likely to take about 6-8 months to become fully operational in an integrated manner. IOC aims to start the secondary units to improve the quality of fuel in phases by October-end. The plant on the east coast was expected to operate at 60 per cent capacity between November and March.

The refinery is expected to cater to eastern India, currently fed by private players and plants from north India.

The refinery was scheduled to be built by April 2012 but has faced delays because of law and order problem. The delays have inflated the refinery's cost to Rs 34,555 crore from the initial estimate of Rs 29,777 crore.

The refinery is configured to process the toughest, heaviest and dirtiest crude from countries such as Mexico, which is cheaper than the cleaner and easily processed varieties from West Asia. The refinery will have a Nelson Complexity Index of 13, the highest in the world.

The Paradip refinery, IOC's eleventh, will produce 5.97 million tonnes (mt) of diesel, 3.4mt petrol, 1.45mt kerosene/aviation turbine fuel, 536,000 tonnes of LPG, 124,000 tonnes of naphtha and 335,000 tonnes of sulphur, all of which will be for sale in the domestic market.

With the commissioning of Paradip, IOC's refining capacity will increase to 1.61 million barrels per day (bpd), which is about 35 per cent of the country's 4.6 million bpd capacity.