new delhi the oil ministry wants stateowned refiners to emulate reliance industries ril for improving profitability and has drawn up an ambitious plan nicknamed operation bottoms up to tweak up the various distilling units in public sector refineries for better product yieldsthe basic thrust of the ministry plan is to enable all public sector refineries to process highsulphur sourheavy crude the type is cheaper than lowsulphur sweetlight variety but leaves higher quantities of residue and products like fuel oil and bitumen by tweaking processing units of stateowned refineries the residue can be processed further for extracting more valuable productsa ministry paper notes that ril is following this strategy and distilling only highsulphur crude at its jamnagar plant where 90 of the output is made up of valuable products known in industry parlance as light and middle distillates light distillates consist of lpg jet fuel and petrol while middle distillates are made up of automotive diesel and industrial fuel oilsthe paper says processing heavy crude will save huge amounts for public sector refineries and improve their margins which at present is hovering at 67 per barrel though the paper does not mention reliances refining margins industry estimates reckon indias biggest private sector refiner is raking in more than the national averageno wonder as case in point the paper reckons hpcls vizag refinery will save rs 490 crore a year by processing heavy crude and get rs 147 crore more in revenue annually from higher distillate yields similarly indianoils chennai refinery will save rs 320 crore and gain rs 200 crore in revenue mrpl will save rs 435 crore and gain rs 270 crorethe paper wants the boards of all oil companies to approve the reengineering and capital expenditure plans so that the revamp of all refineries can be completed within 30 months