IOC offers to meet fuel demand of SAARC region

State-run Indian Oil Corp has offered to meet the fuel deficit in the SAARC region by expanding some its existing refineries.

SAARC nations, including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal are projected to have a fuel deficit of 17.05 million tons by 2015 and 20.85 million tons by the year 2020.

The Energy Research Institute, who was asked by the SAARC Secretariat in Kathmandu to suggest ways to meeting the demand, proposed setting up a regional 23 million tons capacity refinery.

IOC, in its comments on the proposal, said single location refinery would not be economically viable to meet all of the SAARC demand.

"In case the other countries accept a long-term tie up with IOC for the supply of petroleum products, IOC can suitably expand some of its existing refineries to meet their requirement on mutually agreed terms based on international prices," the company said.

IOC and its subsidiaries units have proximity to all the SAARC countries except Afghanistan.

The company said as the SAARC countries were spread out from Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh in the north-east, Sri Lanka and Maldives in the south and Pakistan, Afghanistan on the north-west part of India, there would have to be two or three coastal refineries to minimise the logistic costs.

If coastal refineries are to be built, they should be of minimum economic size, IOC said. Besides cost, the proposed units would have an adverse impact on environment in terms of emissions of green house gases.

Of the total fuel deficit in SAARC countries, diesel demand would be about 11 million tons in 2015 and 15 million tons in 2020.

"Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are observed to be the major deficit countries," IOC said.

In 2015, Sri Lanka would have a fuel deficit of 6.1 million tons while Pakistan would need to import 4.60 million tons of products. Bangladesh would require 3.3 million tons of products from outside.

For Pakistan, the deficit would widen to seven million tons by 2020 while Bangladesh would see minor addition to 4.3 million tons. Sri Lanka's deficit would remain at 6.1 million tons.