Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has urged the trade union leadership and stakeholders to accelerate efforts to ensure timely completion of Integrated Refinery Expansion Project (IREP) of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd-Kochi Refinery.

The appeal comes in view of the slow pace in construction works, as the monthly progress rate stood at 4 per cent against the required 6 per cent to ensure its timely completion.

Review meeting At a review meeting, the Chief Minister requested the State- and district-level trade union leadership to extend all support for accelerating the rate of progress by ensuring 24-hour working schedule and non-disruption of work at the site.

The time has come to accelerate the efforts for faster completion of IREP to ensure supply of auto fuels that comply with Euro-IV/Euro-V specifications from Kochi Refinery by April 1, 2016 as decided by the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, Chandy added.

Work progress Prasad K Panicker, Executive Director, pointed out that the ₹16,500-crore project has achieved an overall progress of 88 per cent. What is needed now is to accelerate the construction phase, which is at 69 per cent now.

The civil jobs are nearly completed and structural jobs are nearing completion. Equipment / piping erection, and electrical / instrumentation jobs are in progress. More than 90 per cent equipment has been received at site and about 55 per cent erected on foundations.

The project, he said, is aimed at increasing the refining capacity of Kochi Refinery to 15.5 MMTPA and modernisation of refinery to produce auto-fuels. The units of IREP are designed to be flexible enough to process high sulphur crudes, which will fetch a higher margin.

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