NEW DELHI, May 19 (Reuters) – Indian Oil Corp. (IOC.NS), the nation’s prime refiner, stated on Friday it’s trying to decarbonise its petrochemical feedstocks by introducing bio-naphtha at its crackers.

“To attain sustainability, bio-based feedstocks such as bio-naphtha and bio-ethanol are being envisaged as the natural transition for the petrochemical industry,” the corporate’s Chairman Shrikant Madhav Vaidya stated at Asia Petrochemical Industry Conference, with out offering a timeline.

Bio-naphtha is often obtained from hydro-treatment of used vegetable and cooking oils.

“It is under research and development at our Faridabad facility in northern India… we have kept the used cooking oil pathway open but we’re trying to get it via bio-ethanol,” the corporate’s government director of petrochemicals, A. S. Sahney, advised Reuters on the sidelines of the occasion.

Reporting by Mohi Narayan; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise

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