Essar Oil to expand Vadinar refinery in Gujarat

Essar Oil Ltd., a subsidiary of Essar Energy PLC, has announced plans to expand its existing oil refinery at Vadinar near Jamnagar in Gujarat, India.

The facilities has an existing capacity of 20 million tonnes per annum (MTPA). The Vadinar refinery handles diverse range of crude - from sweet to sour and light to heavy crude oil. It produces LPG, naphtha, light diesel oil, aviation turbine fuel (ATF) and kerosene.

The new capacity to be raised by the proposed project has not been disclosed. The total project investment is estimated at Rs60 billion (US$971.2 million).

At the moment, between 35% and 40% of Essar Oil's crude oil requirement at Vadinar refinery comes from West Asia and between 15% and 20% comes from domestic suppliers, while the rest is transported all the way from South America.

The Vadinar Refinery benefits from a fully integrated infrastructure including India's only captive coal-fired power plant (nearing completion) to provide power and process steam, a port, pipelines and tankage, with multi-modal product dispatch facilities through rail, road, and sea, giving it a unique cost advantage.