The Central government is planning to almost double its oil refining capacity to 450-500 million tonne in the next 10 years to meet the rising domestic fuel demand as well as cater to the export market.

The construction of a new 60 million tpa west coast refinery, which is crucial to the capacity doubling plan, will start soon.

The capacity addition will be both brownfield (expansion of the existing units) and greenfield (new refineries).

The refining capacity of 249.9 million tonne exceeded the fuel demand of 213.7 million tonne in 2019-20, but the demand is likely to rise to 335 million tonne by 2030 and 472 million tonne by 2040.

A new grassroot refinery of nine million tonne capacity is under construction at Barmer in Rajasthan, the existing units at Koyali in Gujarat, Panipat in Haryana, Paradip in Odisha, Vizag in Andhra Pradesh, Mumbai, Bina in Madhya Pradesh, Numaligarh in Assam and Chennai are being expanded.

Also, India's liquefied natural gas (LNG) import capacity will rise by 40 million tonnes by 2030, adding to the present capacity of 42.5 million tonne.

A total of 78,000 petrol pumps are planned to be added to 69,109 present ones. Also, 2,207 CNG stations are to be expanded to 10,000.

Oil pipeline network of 28,790 km is to be augmented by another 15,000 km and 14,239 km will be added to 16,981 km of natural gas lines.