India’s refinery capacity utilisation has been at 105% to 108% over the last six months, a senior official from refiner Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals said on Wednesday, adding that higher diesel demand is pushing refiners to prioritise diesel over jet fuel.
“Most of our refiners are complex, can take a wide variety of crude from API range from something like 16 to 45 or 48,” said Nandakumar Pillai, a company director, at the APPEC conference.
Separately, the company plans to operate at greater than 100% until March next year, Pillai told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference.
MRPL operates a 300,000-barrel-per-day coastal refinery in India’s southern Karnataka state.
At present, a third of the company’s crude supply comes from the Middle East, a third comes from domestic supplies and a third comes from the rest of the world, Pillai said, adding that MRPL has been diversifying its crude procurement since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.
On refined products, Pillai said higher diesel demand in India is pushing refiners to prioritise diesel over jet fuel.
“Depends on the hardware, we can go anywhere between 8% to 12% of the swing” between diesel and jet fuel, Pillai said.