In this follow-up conversation, Sanjay Gupta — former CEO Projects for the Dangote Refinery and Petrochemical Project, and former Chairman & Managing Director of Engineers India Limited (EIL) — takes a deep technical dive into how Indian refinery configurations have evolved since the 1990s, and how they compare to grassroots refineries being built today in the Middle East and Africa.

Building on the first episode's broad historical overview, this session gets granular: from early hydrocracker-and-RFCC combinations, to the rise of delayed cokers as the preferred bottom-of-the-barrel upgrader, to the shift toward high-severity FCCs designed to maximize propylene output. Sanjay also breaks down why Middle Eastern and African refinery configurations diverge sharply from India's — favoring gasoline maximization over diesel — and closes with a candid look at technology licensors, Chinese vs. Western technology penetration in India, and why foreign direct investment in Indian downstream projects remains so rare.

Chapters:

0:00 – Introduction & Welcome
1:34 – The Global Refining Landscape
4:12 – The Evolution of Early Indian Refineries in the 1990s
13:43 – Understanding Diesel Hydrodesulphurization (DHDS)
15:27 – Scaling Up and the Rise of Coker Units
17:46 – Coker versus FCC: The Bottom-of-the-Barrel Decision
26:57 – Petrochemical Integration: Aromatics and Olefins
31:26 – The High-Severity FCC Configuration
46:23 – International Configurations: Middle East and Africa
54:03 – Technology Providers and Licensors in India
1:00:54 – Chinese Technology and Slurry Hydrocracking
1:05:48 – Petrochemical Projects in India 1:09:54 – Public versus Private Sector Refineries
1:14:05 – Foreign Investment and Joint Ventures
1:20:19 – Closing Remarks

Molecules to Market is a program by Portfolio Planning PLUS (ppPLUS), bringing together technology, economics, and real facility-level data to give industry professionals a grounded, technical view of the global energy and petrochemical landscape — beyond the headlines.