LN Mittal has decided to foray into petrochemical field after showing his presence into exploration and refining just to sturdily explore the options in hydrocarbons value-chain.

Mittal-owned firm, Mittal Investments Sarl based in Luxembourg, has signed different MoUs with Hindustan Petroleum, GAIL, Oil India Ltd and French major Total on Thursday. Mittal has now targeted to set up integrated refinery-cum-petrochemicals complex at Vizag in coming days.

According to the report, the cost of the project would be about $6 billion and it will have the capacity to process almost 15 million tonnes of crude per year. It will produce one million tonne of petrochemicals every year.

HPCL chairman Arun Balakrishnan said after signing the MoU with Mittal Investment that the accurate equity structure and the project finance would be decided when both the groups would go through the feasibility reports.

This is Mittal’s second project with HPCL that has been acquired 49% stake in the Bhatinda refinery, a public sector unit.

Arcelor-Mittal executive VP Sudhir Maheshwari said that Mittals are very much interested to rapidly expand the oil and gas exploration as well as downstream refining and petrochem business as well. However, he rejected any proposal to make an entry into retail business in India right now.

According to the report, the French company Total would conduct the feasibility study for the refinery and the GAIL would likely to review the petrochem unit’s viability. Mittal has acquired about 2,500 acres of land near HPCL’s existing 7.5 million tonnes refinery at Vizag for the project.

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