New Delhi: The Reliance Industry Limited (RIL)-owned refinery at Jamnagar has begun working at 100 per cent capacity output and there will be no shortage of petroleum products including Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), at any of its stations, company sources said on Thursday.
Reliance Refinery, the biggest in the country and one of the largest in the world, which supplies at least 25 per cent of petroleum products to the country, was caught in a blaze on Wednesday morning and there were apprehensions that it may hit supplies to consumers.
Meanwhile, the government has said that at least 65,000 tonnes of LPG could be imported to offset any shortfall of the fuel in the aftermath of the blaze.
Other oil marketing companies like HPCL, IOC and BPCL have been asked to pitch in their supplies to tide over and shortfall. The fire broke out on Wednesday morning at about 1040 hrs, IST at the secondary processing units (VGO Hydrotreater-II) of the refinery.
One of the Reliance personnel was injured seriously. There were no other casualties. The fire was brought under control by Reliance Plant and Fire Fighting personnel in less than two hours. The exact extent of damage to the VGO Hydrotreater-II unit, which is one of the 40 units in the refinery complex, is being assessed, the sources said.
''All other refinery units, including both the crude units and petrochemical units, are operating normally,'' they added. Jamnagar refinery is India's largest oil refinery and after its capacity expansion Reliance would become the country's largest refinery surpassing state-owned Indian Oil Corp (IOC).
It is also the only refinery in the country, which is able to process a wide variety of crudes – from very light to very heavy (from 18 to 45 degree API) and from sweet to very heavy (with sulphur content from 0 to 4.5 per cent).
The Jamnagar refinery currently produces 11 million tonnes of diesel, 4 million tonnes of naphtha and petrol each, 3.6 million tonnes of jet/aviation turbine fuel/superior kerosene oil, 2.3 million tonnes of LPG, 2.7 million tonnes of reformat and 2.5 million tonnes of petroleum coke.
In 2004-05, Reliance exported 10.2 million tonnes of petroleum products, up from 7.5 million tonnes in the previous year.
The company started work on the Rs 9,700 crore refinery project in 1996 and completed it in less than 30 months. The original construction of the refinery was lead by Bechtel. Construction was carried out by a number of Indian companies such as Larsen & Toubro (L&T), Dodsal, Punj Lloyd, Trafalgar House and Simplex.
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