Indian Oil Corporation Ltd, the country's top refiner, has restarted all units at its 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) Paradip refinery in eastern India, said a government official. The refinery's maintenance shutdown has been extended by a few days due to shortage of laborers amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Out of about 1,400 workers and supervisors mobilized for shutdown jobs from outside, less than 400 are there," said Sangram Keshari Mohapatra, the top bureaucrat in the district of Jagatsinghpur, where the refinery is located.
IOC planned to shut Paradip from 25 July to 15 August, a company official said. But there was a slight delay in resuming operations. Paradip processed 236,000 bpd last month compared with 331,000 bpd a year earlier, according to oil ministry data.
IOC is the country's largest refiner by capacity with a crude processing design capacity of 1.6mn bpd, including its stake in subsidiary Chennai Petroleum. IOC is operating its refineries at a 75pc utilisation rate, down from 90pc in early July because of localised Covid-19 lockdowns.
