Technip Energies, the engineering company based in Nanterre, France, has won a contract to modernize a refinery in Mumbai, in western India. Business Standard reported that Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, the state-run refiner known as HPCL, awarded Technip Energies an engineering, procurement and construction contract, which the company announced on October 12. The company defines a large award as one worth between $279 million and $559 million at current exchange rates in revenue, and it will record the order in its Project Delivery backlog in the third quarter of 2026.
The contract covers two new units for HPCL’s Lube Modernization and Bottom Upgradation project. One is an Integrated Hydrocracker and Catalytic Dewaxing unit with a capacity of 550,000 metric tons a year. The other is a Solvent Deasphalting unit with a capacity of 850,000 metric tons a year. Both will join the operating Mumbai refinery.
What the units are for
The project will raise HPCL’s output of lube oil base stocks, which go into automotive engine oils and industrial lubricants. It will also turn heavier refinery streams into higher-value products, which improves the use of the refinery’s existing assets. According to the company, the work responds to India’s investment in modernizing its refining infrastructure to meet growing domestic demand for fuels and specialty petroleum products.
The contractor
Technip Energies works in liquefied natural gas, hydrogen, ethylene, sustainable chemistry and carbon dioxide management. It employs more than 18,000 people in thirty-five countries and reported revenue of $8 billion for 2025. Its shares trade on Euronext Paris. Loïc Chapuis, president of Project Delivery and Services at Technip Energies, said in the company’s announcement: “This award by HPCL reflects the confidence placed in our EPC delivery capabilities and builds on a relationship between our two companies spanning more than two decades.”
What it means for American companies
A state-run refiner has chosen a European contractor it has worked with for more than twenty years to rebuild part of a major plant, and it is paying for upgrades that make more valuable products from the crude it already processes. American suppliers of refinery technology, equipment and engineering services should note that India’s refiners are spending on existing sites as well as new ones, and that long relationships with contractors shape who wins the large packages.
