Bringing decades of experience to an industry undergoing change

Vartika Shukla, Chair and Managing Director of Engineers India Limited (EIL), sets the scene of her organisation’s role in the country’s energy ecosystem ahead of India Energy Week 2025

Could you outline EIL’s strategic contribution to the Indian energy sector and beyond?

We have a history of over 60 years now and over the years we have grown the hydrocarbon sector in the country, as well as contributed internationally. From the perspective of today, where we’re having a lot of transition, a lot of new energies coming into the picture. We’ve also grown as a company, providing services in these sectors as well.

I’m happy to share that in the oil and gas sector, our Dangote refinery in Nigeria, which is one of the largest single-train refineries, just moved into a good cycle of commissioning, which boosts our performance credentials for our engineering services, consultancy services, and procurement services on a very large global scale as well.

So, we are doing good in terms of oil and gas. We are now present in about nine countries, such as Guyana, where our business interests lie in the power plant space. We are eager to move the needle at a faster pace, both in the domestic segment in India, where refineries and petrochemicals have been our core strength, and also on a global scale.

Under your chairmanship, EIL has seen a lot of diversification in recent years. What is your strategy for the future?

We have strategically extended our engineering capabilities, our project management capabilities, and design capabilities into segments which are related to oil and gas. We are present in steel, we’ve re-entered the non-ferrous metallurgy sector, and we are into infrastructure as well.

Moreover, we have good traction with ADNOC in Abu Dhabi where our largest engineering office outside of India is based. We have about 150 people there and we wish to go from strength to strength in the MENA region.

The third element of the private sector we are in there is a different method of implementation of a project. We are very competitive in that area as well. As we go forward, we are already well positioned into the biofuels space, the green hydrogen space, and right from the feasibility stage through to implementation.

When oil and gas and other companies around the world look for mega-projects, EIL is one of the names they always look for. What’s your secret sauce and can you talk about some projects as per the current order book?

We have end-to-end smart engineering platforms where we build in the element of accuracy. We have in-house work that we do in procurement. What we are doing now is we’ve been putting up a large-size, mega-scale ethylene cracker in the centre of India, along with the downstream polymer units.

Our cracker we have done for the private sector, which is Hindustan Metallenergi, is up and running in Bhatinda. Again, it’s a world-size cracker, 1.2 million ethylene, expandable to 1.5. And dehydrogenation units, which are coming up in India. We are engaged in both. A second one is one of the largest, out in Houston, which is with Dow, based on UP technology. And that same technology we are going to put up for one of our clients, on the west coast of India.

In the Indian energy space we’ve seen, especially under the Ministry’s guidance and leadership, that there›s a clear focus on low carbon solutions and a clear pathway to the energy transition. How is EIL helping with that?

I’ll put it in three buckets. One is that we are looking at energy efficiency. The second element is we are looking at technology selection, because that’s where it all begins. And particularly looking at the med-camp space, where it’s very energy intensive, a very high footprint of CO2 emissions.

And the third element is on the implementation of these projects, particularly in biofuels. There is one already operating in Panipat. The second - second generation ethanol for bamboo as a feedstock - is in the pre-commissioning stage in Numerikar. And that’s a unique plant. It is with Chempolis technology, where EIL is a strategic partner in terms of collaboration on R&D and development of the technology.

There are two others implemented and commissioned a few months back for one of our sister concerns in Madhya Pradesh. And a third, we just laid a foundation stone for, is HEFA-based technology, which refines vegetable oils, waste oils, or fats for SAF (sustainable aviation fuel).