Reliance Industries and Essar Oil , India’s largest private sector oil refiners, are set to create the world’s biggest petroleum refining hub as part of plans to expand their plants in Jamnagar, western India. Essar has announced a $6bn expansion plan to more than triple capacity at its refinery, while Reliance, at its site a few kilometres away, is working on plans to almost double capacity.
The expansion projects will bring their combined refining capacity at Jamnagar to 1.9m barrels a day, the largest in the world in a single location, outstripping hubs such as Rotterdam and Singapore and those in China and South Korea, according to figures compiled by Fesharaki Associates Consulting and Technical Services, Singapore.
An FCC regenerator being prepared for erection at the Reliance Petrochemical Complex in Jamnagar
Under their plans, Essar announced it was lifting capacity at its plant to 700,000 b/d by 2010 from 220,000 b/d. Reliance is in the middle of a $6bn investment to expand capacity to 1.24m b/d from 660,000 b/d by next year. Once the expansion works are complete, the nearest comparable hub will be South Korea’s Ulsan at 1.35m b/d, Facts said.
Prashant Ruia, Essar group director, said the total development cost of the refinery including the expansion would be $9bn, which analysts consider extremely cheap against the global average of about $13bn-$15bn for the same size plant.
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