Green Hydrogen
But why outsource ?
Why not just shut the refinery down?
I spent considerable time in an oil refinery in my growing years as well as part of my engineering. IIT Powai had two full size refineries less than a hour away. These are nasty beasts spewing out green house gases by the millions of tons. Replacing 5000 tpa of grey hydrogen with green hydrogen will not move the needle on anything. Shutting down the refinery altogether is a better approach. Especially because we are apparently an exporter of petroleum products. Once a few refineries are shut down, we can import refined products rather than import crude. Refinery margins are getting slimmer by the day and importing finished products may involve lower forex outflow than importing crude oil. And we would avoid the green house gases emissions as well. The real estate prices in Mumbai would make scrapping of the refineries very viable. Not to mention the possibility of a Union Carbide Bhopal type accident or an explosive drone being sent by an enemy nation which could burn the whole city.
But that apart, it is even more amusing to see two really cash rich oil cos – IOCL and HPCL – using an external agency to supply them with green hydrogen. Why wouldn’t they do it themselves ? They have pathetic return on their investments and clearly L&T and Ocior are not going to work at the pathetic levels of financial return that the oil companies work at.
I know L&T and Ocior from an IIT Alumni perspective. Ocior founders Ranjit Gupta and Murli are both my juniors from IIT. They are as technically and commercially sharp as can be. L&T has a pretty well integrated play – with in-house electrolyser manufacturing and a rock solid EPC and heavy engg division. Both these companies are also large in solar. Ocior founders have had two billion dollar exits. And L&T with 20 or 30 GW under construction is probably the worlds largest solar EPC contractor. So they are both a great choice as far as partners go. Renew is also a IIT peer but Suman Sinha is nowhere near a Ocior or a L&T. Nor is Jakson Green. NTPC is an old world incumbent monopoly – not relevant to modern times.
But the question that remains is – why outsource ? And why not shut down the refineries in Mumbai to reduce pollution rather than do some random small time name sake “greenification” in far away Mathura or even farther away Visag.
This just doesn’t make any sense. The fastest way to reduce green house gas emission from Indian refineries is to shut down the oil refineries in Mumbai.
It is absurd to be processing millions of tons of crude in the middle of a city with 30 million people.
Turning a blind eye and diverting attention by green washing elsewhere is not going to help.