Japanese firms have expressed interest in a petrochemical investment plan in India by state-owned oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油), CPC chairman Tai Chein (戴謙) said in an interview on Wednesday.
With assistance from Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) chairman James Huang (黃志芳), some renowned Japanese firms are mulling involvement in CPC’s Indian investment project, which seeks to develop a petrochemical cluster with integrated upstream, midstream and downstream enterprises in one industrial park, Tai said.
Cooperation with Japanese investors would reduce the investment risk and significantly increase CPC’s chance of success, he added.
Tai did not provide details, but said that the company and other petrochemical firms have this year sent two delegations to India to survey the market.
CPC is to organize an alliance with other petrochemical firms for the investment, Tai said, adding that the alliance is expected to enter talks with Indian-based conglomerate Adani Group to jointly fund the Mundra petrochemical industrial park project.
Mundra, a town in Gujarat State’s Kutch District, is the hometown of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Tai said.
As Adani — which owns railway, power plant and airport assets in India — has built an excellent relationship in Indian business and political circles, cooperation with the group is expected to bode well for CPC’s future investments in the country, Tai said.
CPC is considering one of three capacity options for annual production of ethylene, one of the most important petrochemical raw materials — 1 million tonnes, 1.2 million tonnes or 1.5 million tonnes — in the petrochemical industrial park in India, he said, adding that no final decision has been made.
CPC is also planning to establish a petrochemical park in Indonesia and is set to relocate the nation’s No. 5 naphtha cracker there, Tai added.
The naphtha cracker in Kaohsiung has been mothballed since the end of 2015 due to rising awareness of environmental protection in Taiwan.
Faced with increased competition in the local petrochemical market, CPC decided to work with other petrochemical firms to move the plant to Indonesia for future development.
Talks to relocate the naphtha cracker to Indonesia are under way, Tai said, adding that the company hopes to complete the talks in the first half of next year and move the plant by the end of next year.
He said the plant is expected to have an annual capacity of 500,000 tonnes of ethylene.
Meanwhile, Tai said another investment project in the US is still under evaluation, although no investment site has been chosen.
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