The Centre has cleared the long-pending Rs 92,160 crore proposal of the Tamil Nadu government to set up a petroleum, chemicals and petrochemicals investment region, home minister P Chidambaram announced.
The project will be spread over an area of 256.83 sq km in the coastal belt of Cuddalore, Chidambaram, Shirali and Tarangambadi towns, 150 km from Chennai.
It will be the fifth such region in the country. The other four are in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, West Bengal and Orissa. These are specifically delineated investment region for the establishment of production facilities for petroleum, chemicals and petrochemicals.
The one in Gujarat, one of the largest, is spread over 453 sq km in the Gulf of Khambhat.
The Tamil Nadu region, which al ready has commitments to investments worth Rs 22,160 crore, will have two anchor tenants. One will be Nagajuna Oil Corporation, a joint venture of the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (Tidco) and Nagurjuna Fertilisers and chemicals. The second anchor tenant will be Chennai Petroleum Corporation, which will establish a 15 million tonnes capacity refinery cum petroleum complex at a cost of Rs 40,000 crore. It will also have an ethylene cracker downstream units as well as aromatic complex.
Nagarjuna Oil is already setting up a 6 million tonne (mt) refinery at Cuddalore at a cost of Rs 9,660 crore, which will be completed by September 2013. It has also finalised plans to expand the refinery capacity by nine million tonnes by 2015-16. Further, the company plans to set up a xylene production facility, a purified terephtalic acid plant and propylene recovery unit.
The development of infrastructure such as roads, rail, air links, ports, water supply, power, desalination plant, etc, will cost around Rs 13,354 crore.
The policy on such regions prescribes that infrastructure will be created or upgraded through public-private partnerships to the extent possible and the Centre will provide the necessary viability gap funding.
Accordingly, Tamil Nadu has sought central support of Rs 1,143 crore towards the gap funding in two road related projects, CETP and desalination plants and Rs 1,500 crore as direct budgetary support for a rail project.
Of the 256.83 sq. km area, the processing area will be 104 sq km; the balance will include residential, commercial and other social and institutional infrastructure.
In the special region in Andhra Pradesh Hindustan Petroleum, which will be the anchor tenant will set up a refinery, while in Orissa Indian Oil Corporation will be the anchor tenant and set up the refinery.
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