Pradhan defends mega oil refinery amid e-vehicle push
28 Nov 2017 11:39 PM IST
New Delhi: Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Tuesday strongly defended plans to build the Rs 2.7 lakh crore oil refinery on the west coast by 2022 despite the push for electric vehicles, saying that India needs multi-source fuels to meet its fast-growing energy needs.
The plan to build the 60 million tonnes (MT) a year capacity refinery in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra has come in for questioning after Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari announced that only electric cars would be produced in the country after 2030.
Besides, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal has said that diesel locomotives will be phased out by 2022.
"India consumes just 6 per cent of the global primary energy at present but it will account for 25 per cent of incremental growth," Pradhan said at a KPMG Energy Summit here.
In order to meet the vast growing energy needs, India needs "multi-source fuels," he said, adding that there is a requirement for conventional fuels, coal, renewable sources as well as nuclear.
India has a capacity to refine 232.066 MT of crude oil into fuel a year, which exceeded the demand of 194.2 MT in 2016-17 fiscal.
According to the International Energy Agency (EA), this demand is expected to reach 458 MT by 2040.
Pradhan said India's per capita petrochemical consumption is just 10 kg as against the global average of 30 kg. And the nation is import dependent to meet its petrochemical needs.
"So if the petrochemical demand grows with the expanding economy, we would need domestic production," he said.
The planned Rs 2.7 lakh crore project in Ratanagiri district of Maharashtra will have a 10-12 MT petrochemical complex.
Petrochemicals which form the building blocks for products used in the manufacture of wide range of items, from plastics to cosmetics, is derived from refining crude oil or natural gas.
Refineries world over are looking at value addition to produce petrochemicals.
Pradhan said that just a couple of days back Saudi Aramco and Saudi Arabia's chemicals company SABIC announced plans to develop a fully-integrated crude oil to chemicals (COTC) complex.
The $20 billion project is planned to process 400,000 barrels per day (20 MT) of crude oil and produce some 9 MT of chemicals and base oils per year by 2025.
Oil minister pitches for including gas in GST
New Delhi: Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Tuesday made a strong case for inclusion of natural gas in the Goods and Services Tax, saying that if polluting coal can be included, then the environment-friendly fuel certainly deserves a place in the new regime.
"Coal has been included and levied with 5 per cent tax but gas is outside GST, how fair is that," he said at the KMPG Energy Summit here.
Crude oil, petrol, diesel, aviation turbine fuel (ATF) or jet fuel and natural gas are not included in GST, which has amalgamated over a dozen indirect taxes including excise duty, service tax and VAT since it kicked in from July 1.
Hence, while various goods and services procured by the oil and gas industry are subjected to GST, the sale and supply of oil, gas and petroleum products continue to attract earlier taxes like excise duty and VAT.
Unlike other industries which can take credit for any tax paid towards the furtherance of business, no credits on input GST will be available to the oil and gas industry leading to the huge additional indirect tax burden.
Pradhan's ministry had previously written to the Finance Ministry to consider including natural gas in GST.
Industry body Ficci has also pitched for the inclusion of natural gas in the new indirect tax regime so as to help producers contain cost and aid in moving towards a gas-based economy.
In a letter to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Ficci said that keeping natural gas out of the GST is causing hardships and having an adverse impact on the producers as it is increasing their costs.
Gas sales including CNG and piped gas supplies attract VAT ranging from 5-12
per cent. Pti
Next Story
