India's Reliance Industries has increased the capacity of its export-oriented refinery at the world's biggest refinery complex by 30 percent to 704,000 bpd, an Indian government report has said.
The crude oil processing capacity of the refinery in the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) at Jamnagar, northwest India, was 540,000 bpd as of the previous government report.
Reliance has reported the increased capacity at the SEZ export-oriented plant, attributing the increase to streamlining the processes at the refinery, Reuters quoted two sources familiar with the issue as saying on Tuesday.
Reliance's Jamnagar site is the world's largest refining hub, in which the refinery in the SEZ is the sixth largest in the world with a capacity to process 580,000 bpd of crude oil, according to Reliance Industries' website.
The first refinery at the Jamnagar site was built in 1999 and has an installed capacity of 660,000 bpd, selling refined oil products on the domestic market. The refinery at the SEZ was added in 2008 and made the Jamnagar complex the world's largest oil processing hub.
The refineries at the processing site are future ready and can produce gasoline and diesel from any grade, including heavy grades.
In September last year, Reliance Industries was said to be planning a major capacity expansion of the site to increase crude oil processing capacity to around 2 million bpd, from the current 1.2-million-bpd capacity.
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According to Reuters sources, who had seen a company presentation on the plans to the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Reliance Industries is considering expanding the capacity of its dual refinery complex in Jamnagar by 30 million tons by 2030, to 100 million tons per year, which would be equal to some 2 million bpd.
To meet fuel demand growth from economic expansion and growing middle class buying more passenger cars, India needs to double its refining capacity by 2040, a senior executive at Indian Oil Corp said at a conference in September.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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