OREANDA-NEWS. April 04, 2012. Essar Oil Ltd. announces the appointment of Mr. C. Manoharan, as Director (Refinery), with a position on the Company's board. Prior to this, Mr. Manoharan held the position of Head of Refinery at Vadinar and was instrumental in successfully running the refinery consistently at above 130% capacity using almost 70 different grades of crude oil and producing high quality petroleum products. He also played a key role in successfully completing Essar Oil’s train I expansion project which increased refining capacity to 18MMTPA and complexity to 11.8 from 6.1.

Prior to joining Essar Oil, Mr. Manoharan was with Indian Oil Corp. Ltd. (IOCL) for about 31 years, where his last held position was that of Executive Director - Panipat Refinery. Mr.  Manoharan, a Chemical Engineer, joined Essar Oil as Head of Refinery in May 2008.

“Manoharahan is a stalwart in refining industry and has a very rich experience in Project execution and Refinery operations, having been closely associated with several large scale projects like Panipat Refinery expansion, integrated petrochemical project, and Essar Oil expansion project. Essar Oil board would greatly benefit from his expertise and knowledge,” Said Mr. L.K. Gupta, MD & CEO, Essar Oil.

“I am delighted to be given the opportunity to serve on the board of Essar Oil. We have just completed our expansion project, which will make us amongst the complex refineries globally. We are now fully geared up to ensure the timely completion of our optimisation project by September ’12, which will take our capacity to 20MMTPA,” said Mr. C. Manoharan.