The team is headed by chairman and managing director, BPCL, U Sundararajan.This visit assumes significance as Oman Oil Company (OOC) had recently indicated its preference to join hands with Essar Oil for its refinery project in Gujarat than going ahead with BPCL for Bina project, which had suffered inordinate delays.

Sources said that the petroleum ministry is currently making all possible efforts to woo its counterparts in Oman to support the project as the government is certainly not convinced with OOC's idea of giving preference to Essar oil's refinery project at the expense of Bina project.

Moreover, the issue of Oman's participation in Bina refinery is crucial as the government is keen on improving relationships between the oil producing companies in the Middle East. On being contacted, petroleum minister Ram Naik said that he was not against OOC's decision to join hands with Essar on their refinery project.

However, he said that since Oman was presently interested in persuing only one refinery project in India, his government does not want a situation which restrains OOC from investing in the Bina refinery project.

"The Bina refinery project was initialed much before and that too under a MoU between the two governments. Therefore, in order to maintain the sanctity of the agreement, we have requested OOC to support this project'', Naik added.

Naik, however, agreed that the implementation of Bina project has suffered a lot on account of delays and said that the government assured Oman Oil Company that no procedural delays will now come in the way of this project.

It may be noted here that the commerce and industry minister of Oman, Maqbool Ali Sultan, who is also the chairman of OOC, during his recent visit to India said that Oman Oil was keen to be a joint venture partner for the Essar Oil's refinery project in Gujarat.

The Bina refinery project of BPCL had suffered indefinite delays in getting various clerances which resulted in huge cost over-runs by almost Rs 2,700 crore, as against the initial cost of Rs 5300 crore. The estimated increase has been in the region of Rs 50 crore a month.

Sources said that at one time Oman Oil was so exasperated with the delay in commissioning the project that it was ready to even freeze its investment of $30 million made so far. In was due to this that the company had shifted focus to Essar Oil's 10.5 million tonne refinery scheduled to be operational during 2002-03.

As per sources, following the intervention by Naik, during Maqbool Sultan's visit, OOC has asked BPCL to forward them details related with the exact implementation schedule and the financial pattern for the implementation of this project.

The refinery was originally planned with a capacity of six million tonnes but this could be enhanced to nine million or even 12 million tonnes. Logically, the project should be commissioned within 48 months if everything goes according to plan.

Sources said that BPCL had sent all necessary details and further discussions over this would take place with the OOC officials during this visit of the BPCL team headed by its CMD.