Oil investments in AP to touch 1.2 lakh crore

​Vangali (Visakhapatnam): The oil ministry will invest Rs 1.2 lakh crore over the next four years in Andhra Pradesh with the main aim of making Visakhapatnam-Kakinada corridor as the oil hub of India, said Union Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas (Independent charge) at a public meeting held after Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu laid the foundation for Indian Institute of Petroleum and Energy, here on Thursday.

Addressing a vast crowd mostly comprising college students, the Petroleum Minister said the proposed Visakhapatnam-Rajahmundry-Kakinada petro-chemical complex would definitely come up with an outlay of Rs 35,000 crore. Foundation stone for this will be laid during the current financial year.

Dharmendra Pradhan said the capacity of HPCL refinery in Visakhapatnam for the last 60 years produced only 8.5 million tons per annum and now it will be enhanced to 15 million tons with an investment of Rs 21,000 crore.

``The total investment in all these projects would be to the tune of Rs 62,000 crore in AP in the next four years," the minister said. Elaborating further on the proposed investments, Pradhan said another Rs 60,000 to Rs 70,000 crore would be invested by both the public sector and private sector companies in the Krishna-Godavari basin in the State for exploration and exploitation of oil and gas.

"These projects will definitely make the State emerge as a petroleum hub in the future. This will also create huge employment opportunities and hence there would be need for skilled and semi skilled personnel. The IIPE here will produce the highly skilled engineering graduates while the skill development center will roll out skilled personnel.

The IIPE campus was being developed with an investment of Rs 600 crore will be ready in four years. The institute is functioning from a temporary facility in Andhra University from the current academic year with an intake of 96 students," he said.

The foundation stone for a skill development centre was also laid on the occasion and the minister said 1400 students would be trained every year and absorbed by PSU oil and gas companies.

The Union minister also launched the Prime Minister Ujwala scheme and promised that every house in the State will have a gas connection, by June next marking the TDP and NDA governments completing three years in office.

He said AP will become kerosene free State with 24x7 power supply and LPG connections to all homes and the subsidy given towards kerosene would be used for other social welfare scheme.

The minister also announced that all villages in AP will have petrol, diesel and gas supplied through dedicated pipeline in a couple of years.

Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Union ministers M Venkaiah Naidu, Y S Choudhary and P Ashok Gajapathi Raju spoke on the occasion.