Exclusive: Numaligarh Refinery planning for IPO in next two years, says MD

Bhaskar Jyoti Phukan, Managing Director of Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL)

Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) is looking at an initial public offer (IPO) in the next two years, primarily to support net-zero emission plans of the company, its Managing Director Bhaskar Jyoti Phukan told Moneycontrol.

Phukan said NRL has several projects planned to achieve net-zero targets by 2038 and setting a 2G bio-refinery is one among them. NRL, a subsidiary of state-run Oil India Limited (OIL), is setting up India’s first bio-refinery which would use bamboo as feedstock in Assam.

“When you go for net zero plans, you need financial resources as well. Therefore, you need IPO to be in place. That is one source of funding (for NRL),” said Phukan.

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The Assam-based refinery’s head said major expansion projects of the company would also have been commissioned in the next two years, working in favour of the IPO plans. Under expansion plans, NRL is ramping up its refining capacity to 9 MMTPA (million metric tonne per annum) from 3 MMTPA, setting up crude oil import terminal at Paradip port in Odisha and laying about 1,640 km of pipelines for transportation of imported crude oil to Numaligarh.

“…our new refinery would be commissioned by then (in the next two years), pipeline will also be in place. So, therefore, it will be very comfortable time to go for IPO. And once we identify the green project, I think market will reward us by subscribing to the IPO that we will float,” said Phukan.

NRL, however, has not worked on the specifics of the IPO as the talks are in preliminary stage as of now, he added.

In a major win for the company, NRL on February 14 executed one of the longest Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) in Subansiri River, connecting Lakhimpur and Majuli, for its crude oil pipeline project. NRL’s crude pipeline passes through five states and all major rivers of East India, namely Ganga, Jia Bharali, Subansiri and Brahmaputra.

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