Govt to revive Nanar oil refinery project

MUMBAI: The Maharashtra government is keen on reviving the ₹3.5 lakh crore oil refinery project at Nanar in the Konkan region, which the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena had opposed. The Shinde-Fadnavis government does not want the project to go out of the state, and is looking to set it up at Nanar itself. The issue was discussed in the cabinet on Thursday.

Officials present at the meeting revealed to Hindustan Times that deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis insisted that the state government set up the oil refinery project in the Konkan region, and as far as possible at Nanar.

After losing the ₹1.54 lakh crore Foxconn-Vedanta semiconductor project to Gujarat, the state government is firm about pushing for the oil refinery project. The refinery was proposed to be built with investment from Saudi Aramco, the state-owned company of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

“This project is much bigger than the Vedanta-Foxconn project and thus it is in the interest of the government to make every attempt to bring it to Maharashtra,” said a senior official from the state industries department.

The refinery project had earlier been scrapped by chief min

ister Devendra Fadnavis following opposition from the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, the then ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The two parties had sealed an alliance deal for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls in March 2019, and moving the project away from Nanar was one of the Shiv Sena’s pre-conditions to forging the alliance. Konkan locals had been strongly opposing the refinery project, and the Shiv Sena had

come out in their support in order to secure its traditional voter base in the coastal region. The Thackeray government then pushed for another site for the oil refinery project, 20 kilometres away from Nanar.

The cabinet sub-committee also approved the setting up of a ₹20,000-crore paper production project at Raigad. It has approved a 300-acre land for the project, which the company plans to set up in two phases.