In a bid to achieve 100 per cent Bharat Stage-IV (BS-IV) fuel production, Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL), will invest around ₹1,330 crore in two phases, to complete the conversion from BS-III to a cleaner fuel by the end of this year.

According to executive director of the refinery, SK Dhar Gupta, the first phase will have investment of ₹930 crore to revamp diesel hydro-treating units, called DHDT and DHDS. In the second phase, the vacuum gas oil hydro-treating unit, called as VGO-HDT will be revamped.

It will require about ₹390 crore at the refinery, located at Koyali near Vadodara.

“We are in the process of implementing the phase one currently. For the ₹390-crore phase II of the investments, a board approval is due. We have set a target to start supplying BS-IV grade fuel to our marketing terminals by January 2017. It would require two-three months for sweeping out the BS-III products from the tanks and pipelines," said Dhar Gupta on Friday. According to him, a total of ₹1,330-crore worth of investment will be made to fully convert to BS-IV.

As per the Centre's Auto Fuel Vision & Policy, all vehicles to have BS-IV fuels from April 2017 onwards. As per the BS-IV norms, the sulphur content in diesel will reduce to 50 ppm from 350 ppm in BS-III norm and petrol will have one-third of sulphur content from 150 ppm to 50 ppm, making the fuel cleaner.

“We have also initiated preparations to jump directly from BS-IV to BS-VI fuel by 2020. For this, we will need additional hydro-treating units for both petrol and diesel. It will need additional 50-55 acres. A preliminary feasibility report has put the initial investment estimate at ₹2,770 crore with variation of +/- 30 per cent," Dhar Gupta said, adding that the project will be completed by September 2019.

For the BS-VI norms, the sulphur content in petrol and diesel will further be brought down to 10 ppm each.

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