The Gujarat Refinery is an oil refinery located at Koyali, Vadodara District in Gujarat, Western India. It is the third largest refinery owned by Indian Oil Corporation after Paradip and Panipat Refinery. The refinery is currently under projected expansion to 18 million tonnes per year. History Following the conclusion of the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in February 1961, a site for the establishment of a 2 million tonnes per year oil refinery was selected on 17 April 1961. Soviet and Indian engineers signed a contract in October 1961 for the preparation of the project. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru laid the foundation stone of the refinery on 10 May 1963. The refinery was commissioned with Soviet assistance at a cost of Rs.26 crores began production in October 1965. The first crude distillation unit with a capacity of 1 million tonnes per year was commissioned for trial production on 11 October 1965 and achieved its rated capacity on 6 December 1965. Throughput reached 20% beyond its designed capacity in January 1966. President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan dedicated the refinery to the nation with the commissioning of second crude distillation unit and catalytic reforming unit on 18 October 1966. The third 1 million tonnes per year distillation unit was commissioned in September 1967 to process Ankleshwar and North Gujarat crudes. In December 1968, Udex plant was commissioned for production of benzene and toluene using feedstock from CRU. By 1974–75 with in-house modifications, the capacity of the refinery increased by 40% to a level of 4.2 million tonnes per year. To process imported crude the refinery was expanded during 1978-79 by adding another 3 million tonnes per year crude distillation unit along with downstream processing units including vacuum distillation, visbreaker and bitumen blowing units. By 1980-81 this unit started processing Bombay High crude in addition to imported crudes. It was the first time that Indian engineers independently handled a project of that scale. To recover products from the residue, secondary processing facilities consisting of fluidized catalytic cracking unit of 1 million tonnes per year capacity along with a feed preparation unit of 1 million tonnes per year capacities, were commissioned in December 1982. The refinery set up pilot distillation facilities for the production of n-Heptane and light aluminum rolling oils. To enable absorption of increased indigenous crudes the refinery's capacity was further increased to 9.5 million tonnes per year. In 1993–1994, Gujarat commissioned the