CCOE Approval Documents
Checklist (Excel)

CCOE (Chief Controller of Explosives) is the senior statutory office within the Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO) headquartered in Nagpur. The CCOE issues operating licences for petroleum storage, tank farms, LPG terminals, compressed gas installations, and cross-country petroleum pipelines under the Petroleum Act 1934 and the Petroleum Rules 2002. You need a CCOE licence to operate Class A petroleum storage above threshold quantities, to commission a refinery tank farm, to operate an LPG terminal, and to commission a cross-country petroleum or LPG pipeline. State PESO offices handle smaller installations; CCOE handles major installations.

A CCOE approval dossier requires the application form in the prescribed Petroleum Rules 2002 format, site plan showing licensed premises boundary, plot plan with inter-distance tabulation per Class A / B / C petroleum, vessel datasheets, manufacturer test certificates and hydrotest records, design calculations and stress analysis certified by a chartered engineer, electrical area classification drawing, fire fighting layout with water demand calculation, operating procedure manual, emergency response plan, NOC from District Magistrate, NOC from State Fire Authority, environmental clearance, insurance, and licence fee challan. See the CCOE compliance workflow.

Pathnovo, an engineering document intelligence platform, auto-prepares a CCOE tank farm approval dossier by ingesting the project document set (plot plan, tank datasheets, P&IDs, fire layout, hazardous area classification, mechanical and electrical design package) and mapping every CCOE required document to the source it must be generated from. Missing inputs, OISD 118 inter-distance non-compliances, and chartered engineer certification gaps are flagged before submission. Typical dossier preparation drops from 10 weeks manual to 2 weeks auto-prepared. See the CCOE standard reference and the Indian EPC compliance bundle.

PESO (Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation) is the umbrella regulatory authority. CCOE (Chief Controller of Explosives) is the senior statutory office within PESO that signs the operating licence for major installations. Smaller petroleum storage (below CCOE threshold) is licensed by the PESO regional sub-office (Nagpur, Faridabad, Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai); major Class A and Class B petroleum installations, refinery tank farms, and LPG terminals are licensed by the CCOE. The CCOE application is generally a superset of the PESO application with operating procedure, emergency response, and operational documents added. See the PESO documents checklist.

The Petroleum Rules 2002 prescribe minimum inter-distances between Class A, Class B, and Class C petroleum storage tanks, distances to plant boundary, and distances to public roads. OISD 118 Chapter 3 (Layout for Oil and Gas Installations) operationalises these requirements with the de-facto inter-distance table used by CCOE inspectors during pre-licence site inspection. A tank farm that fails OISD 118 Chapter 3 inter-distance will not clear CCOE site inspection. The checklist cross-references OISD 118 compliance status per tank, so layout gaps are caught before CCOE submission. See the OISD 118 compliance checklist.

CCOE operating licence timing depends on installation type, CCOE workload at Nagpur headquarters, and site inspection scheduling. A typical Class A petroleum tank farm operating licence under the Petroleum Rules 2002 takes 6 to 12 months from application to operating licence, with CCOE site inspection between months 3 and 7. An LPG terminal can take longer due to additional safety and fire engineering review. Operating licence validity is typically 3 years for most petroleum installations, with renewal application required at least 90 days before expiry. The checklist tracks application status and renewal due date.

CCOE operating licence is a commissioning prerequisite. Mechanical Completion (MC) cannot proceed to pre-commissioning, and pre-commissioning cannot proceed to commissioning, without the operating licence in hand. HAZOP recommendations affecting layout, vessel capacity, fire safety, or hazardous area extent must be closed and updated in the operating procedure manual before CCOE final inspection. The checklist cross-references HAZOP closure status per applicable document so commissioning is not blocked by an unclosed HAZOP action. See the HAZOP intelligence solution.