Indian Oil drops plans for green hydrogen unit at Mathura

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The country’s largest refiner, Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), has dropped plans for a green hydrogen unit at its Mathura facility, the company told Moneycontrol exclusively in an email response on Friday.

“At present, IOC is setting up a 7 KTA (thousand tonnes per annum) green hydrogen plant and associated facilities in the Panipat refinery and petrochemical complex only. There is no plan to set up such facilities in the Mathura refinery,” IOC said.

IOC operates an 8 MTPA capacity refinery in Mathura, Uttar Praesh, and a 15 MTPA refinery in Panipat, Haryana.

Deviation from original plan

This is a detour from the company announcement in July 2021. “To strengthen its bouquet of clean energy offerings, IndianOil will build the nation's first green hydrogen plant at its Mathura refinery,” the company had said in a press statement on July 23, 2021.

In the 2021 statement, the company said Mathura was selected because of its proximity to the Taj Trapezium Zone. “As we see it, green hydrogen will replace carbon-emitting fuels used in the refinery to process crude oil into value-added products such as petrol and diesel,” the 2021 press statement said.

The initial plan was to set up a 5 KTA (40 MW) green hydrogen plant in Mathura and a 2 KTA (16 MW) plant in Panipat. IOC, in its latest reply to Moneycontrol, said: “Setting up a green hydrogen plant of 7 KTA in Panipat refinery and petrochemical complex is economical,” to a query on why Mathura was dropped from the list.

The company is one of the six public-sector refining companies planning to set up green hydrogen facilities. In addition to IOC’s planned 7KTA plant at Panipat, Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) is adding a 10 KTA at Madhya Pradesh, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) a 7.3 KTA capacity at Andhra Pradesh, and Numaligarh Refinery (NRL) a 5 KTA plant at Assam.

Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals (MRPL) and Chennai Petroleum Corporation (CPCL) are planning 0.5 and 1 KTA plants in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, respectively.