RPL to set up export oriented refinery

20-Mar-06

The newly founded Reliance Petroleum Limited (RPL), the wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), will set up the first export oriented refinery cum petrochemicals plant in Gujarat at an investment of Rs 27,000 crore by December 2008. RPL has proposed to fund the project through debt of Rs 15,750 crore and equity of Rs 11,250 crore. Any additional equity raised in excess of Rs 11,250 crore will be used as additional contingency for the project. The plant will have a crude distillation capacity of 580 Kilo barrels per stream day and polypropylene plant of 0.9 million metric tpa, and plans to cash in on the growing global demand. The current global demand is 81.8 million barrels per day and it is expected to rise to 105 million barrels per day by 2020. However, there is shortage of refinery capacity since no new refinery capacity has been added in US and Europe in the last few years, making it an opportunity for RPL to cash in. The new plant will be sited adjacent to RIL's existing 6.6 lakh bpd refinery and petrochemicals complex with assets of over Rs 80,600 crore. With the new plant, the capacity of RIL-RPL plant in Jamnagar will become 1.2 million bpd, making it the single largest refinery in the world, making Jamnagar the refinery hub of the world.