West Bengal has agreed to facilitate 175 acres of land for Indian Oil Corp.'s (IOC) Haldia refinery expansion and an associated petrochemical complex, Swarajya reported.

The state government's commitment to arrange the acreage removes a key precondition for one of eastern India's largest downstream investments. Haldia, on the Hooghly River in West Bengal's Purba Medinipur district, operates as IOC's coastal refining and petrochemical hub serving the eastern and northeastern Indian fuel market.

The reported package links two workstreams: capacity expansion of the existing refinery and construction of a petrochemical complex on the adjoining site. IOC has pursued petrochemical integration at Haldia for years as a hedge against fuel-only refining margins, and additional land has been the gating item for scaling that ambition.

The report did not specify the expansion target in barrels per day, the configuration of the petrochemical units, the investment figure, or a timeline for land transfer and construction start. Those details would normally accompany a formal board approval or final investment decision from IOC, which has not been announced.

For West Bengal, the commitment represents a competitive move to retain industrial investment. Indian refiners have concentrated recent petrochemical capital on sites on the west coast and in Odisha and Tamil Nadu, and state-level land facilitation often determines where sanctioned projects land.

What to watch: IOC's board approval and FID for the Haldia expansion, the refinery's post-expansion crude throughput figure, and the timeline for physical handover of the 175 acres by the West Bengal government.