Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd, the flagship company of NRI businessman Purnendu Chatterjee-led The Chatterjee Group (TCG), has acquired Coastal Oil & Gas Infra Ltd (COGIL) from the National Company Law Tribunal as the company looks to build a petrochemical complex in Tamil Nadu.

COGIL is a subsidiary of Nagarjuna Oil Corporation Ltd (NOCL), which was acquired by HPL through a liquidation process in 2021.

The principal asset of COGIL, registered in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, is the leasehold right over 322 acres at Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu alongside the NOCL complex. Cuddalore is 175 kilometre to the south of Chennai.

The Amaravati bench of the NCLT approved the resolution plan submitted by HPL last week, which had previously received approval from the committee of creditors of COGIL with a voting share of 68.68 per cent.

Apart from HPL, one entity in the name of BOMS Private Ltd was in the fray for the asset.

HPL offered to pay Rs 37.5 crore as the resolution amount for COGIL compared with the liquidation value of Rs 36.46 crore. The creditors took a haircut of 97 per cent of their total claims.

The resolution plan also provides for keeping the company as a going concern in its normal course of business upon the implementation of the plan, court record showed.

This is the third company acquired by TCG from the insolvency courts over the last two years. It had acquired Garden Silk Mill in 2021 apart from NOCL and COGIL.

COGIL was incorporated to design, finance, procure, supply, construct, operate and maintain 12 crude oil tank facilities and associated infrastructure on build own operate transfer basis and to design, finance, procure, supply, construct and maintain 60 products and intermediates tank farm facilities on build own transfer basis and other project facilities and services for NOCL.

The company was sanctioned a loan of Rs 641.85 crore with Bank of India and Central Bank of India accounting for the majority share of the credit. However, the plan went awry after parent NOCL faced delays in execution and destruction because of the cyclone.

With COGIL under its belt, HPL will have the entire 2,158 acre of NOCL land with itself. The land belonged to the Tamil Nadu government which leased it to NOCL, which in turn had sub-leased 322 acres to COGIL for the transportation project.

The land, along with the shorefront, provides ample opportunity to build a large crude oil refinery. However, the plan is contingent upon, among others, Tamil Nadu providing incentives to the upcoming project and the title of the lease transferred to HPL.

According to the initial plan, HPL will build a petrochemical complex to replicate the success of HPL and MCPI (formerly Mitsubishi PTA) in Bengal. In the second phase, a crude oil refinery will be built focusing on producing naphtha and paraxylene, in contrast to usual practise of producing fuels.

These plants will be initially based on imported raw material naphtha and paraxylene to make polymer, chemical and PTA for local and export markets.