It is with great pleasure that I welcome all of you on this recently redesigned portal of our premier institution, a constituent laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, an Autonomous Body under the Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India. Accredited with ISO 9001:2015 standards, the Institute has been defining new technologies, products and services in the Oil and Gas sector and allied industries since 1960.  We also service fuel users such as the Automotive sector and the Domestic and Industrial Combustion industries.  Our interventions in alternate energy, such as bio-jet fuel and waste plastic to diesel, have helped enhanced India’s position globally in this emerging and future-relevant field.

More than fifty of our technologies in the areas of petroleum refining, natural gas, petrochemicals, and utilization of petroleum products have been commercially deployed.

The Institute’s research, development and deployment activities are carried out through a highly empowered organization structured into ten divisions. Our state-of-the-art multi-disciplinary laboratories, with 350+ permanent staff and 100+ research students, project staff and post-doctoral fellows, delivers excellence in both industrial and scientific research in line with our mandate.  Our research output is published regularly in peer-reviewed, high-impact journals, and cited at impressive rates.

To help society, we have been involved actively in CSIR’s science-based outreach programme, JIGYASA (https://www.csir.res.in/sites/default/files/Daily%20News%20Bulletin%2C%206th-7th%20July%202017%20%281%29.pdf), wherein our facilities and faculty are made available to school students for stimulating their interest in science and technology and inculcating scientific temperament among scholars and nation-builders of the future.  We also participate actively in the CSIR-HARIT (Harnessing Appropriate Rural Interventions and Technologies) programme for technology interventions towards improvement in the quality of life of the vast majority of Indians who live in rural areas.  Through various inter-institutional Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) and the sophisticated instrumentation access portal AnalytiCSIR, our knowledge base, expertise and high-end facilities are made accessible to other academic institutes and researchers across the country. 

We think of our institute as a public corporate R&D Centre at the disposal of the petroleum, natural gas, alternate fuels and fuel user industry with the aim of addressing their entire spectrum of short-, medium- and long-term challenges, whether it be in fuel production, energy efficiency, operational safety, emission and effluent management or conversion of wastes and low-value streams to chemicals and other useful products. Our mission is to create sustainable and cost-effective technologies in these areas to help the nation remain on the path of continued economic growth.

Even during the COVID-19 crisis, we have continued to operate – albeit with reduced attendance, staggered shift operations and extreme caution – in the service of the nation, producing sanitizers, testing COVID-19 patient samples in a unique standalone testing facility designed and commissioned in under two months, and developing an affordable oxygen concentrator for home and hospital use.  

I invite you to explore us further to collaborate with us and realize our vision.

Dr Anjan Ray