The previous post in the series talked about the origin and the value of the refinery. This post gives a brief technical description.
The Jamnagar Refinery is the largest refining complex in the world measuring 21.1 using the Nelson Complexity Index (Oil & Gas Journal, 1998) for refineries. The complex has port facilities, a refinery complex, multiple petrochemicals lines, integral power plants, and related infrastructure. With other nearby Reliance energy complexes this holds more than 1.6% of global capacity (1.36MBpd, >50% geared for export) and consumes more than 30% of Indian available crudes.
The complex is capable of many different transformations to produce high value-added outputs from multiple grades of crude (2018-19 saw more than 170 types). Production capabilities have likely the world’s largest processing lines (out of >50 lines in facility) with Fluidised Catalytic Cracking (key for gasoline production), Alkylation (premium gasoline and jet fuel components, commodity chem), Paraxylene (polymers), Polypropylene (plastic), coker (intermediates), and gases (refinery off-gas cracker; petcoke gasification as precursor to syngas, hydrogen, and low-sulfur outputs etc.) plants in addition to the flexibility to produce many grades of fuels (gasoline, diesel, jet, and marine fuels).
The size and scale of the facility enables many paths to value recovery:
Low-sulfur outputs more desirable after IMO 2020 rules for marine fuels desulfurization the plant can use integrated processing to remove sulfur
Production capabilities (particularly in non-fuel crude-oil-to-chemicals) enable higher value outputs as fuel-production becomes less important in a global “green economy”. A doubling, or more, of domestic demands in India for specialty chemicals, commodity feedstocks, and dependable supplies leverages value (asset valued at more than USD$75B after Ukraine conflict).
Process adjustments (including feedstock blending) enable resilient and agile responses to market condition, and the large scale of processing capacities improves the economic efficiency of asset investment to revenue returns.
Reliance has an asset that was always valuable that has taken on major new value given the geo-political dynamics that feed it below market commodities.
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