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Sitting on the edge of the water in the Gulf of Kutch on India’s western shore is one of America’s dirty secrets.
A mass of steel pipes and concrete boxes stretches across 33sqkm which will eventually become the world’s largest petrochemical refinery.
The products from the Jamnagar complex are for foreign consumption. When complete, the facility will be able to refine 1.24 million barrels of crude a day. Two-fifths of this petroleum will be sent 15,000km by sea to America.
India’s biggest private company, Reliance Industries, with a market capitalisation of $33 billion, runs the plant. Controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, whose father Dhirubhai founded the company, Reliance towers over its industry rivals, contributing eight per cent of India’s exports. The company’s ambitions in Jamnagar have helped India move from being a net importer to an exporter of refined petroleum products.
Having built from scratch the world’s third-largest refinery complex, stage two in the Reliance plan is to double capacity by 2008.
Other companies and nations have woken up to the potential of refining. Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, Saudi Aramco, is planning a 400,000-barrel-a-day refinery. Mexico, alarmed by how much crude oil it exports and petroleum it imports, is also planning a refinery capable of processing 250,000 barrels of crude a day.
The top five
The world’s biggest oil refineries
1. Reliance Industries, Jamnagar India
2. Paraguana, Venzuela
3. S K Copr, South Korea
4. LG Galtex, South Korea
5. ExxonMobil, Singapore
Randeep Ramesh
