RIL plans $6-bn investment at Jamnagar

Reliance Industries Ltd, India's largest private firm, will invest $5.5 to 6 billion to raise capacity of its Jamnagar oil refinery to 60 million tonnes by 2009.

"The expansion would be completed sometime in 2008-09 financial year," a top company official said on Friday.

The 33 million tonnes a year capacity Jamnagar refinery currently is the single largest refinery in India and the expansion would enable the firm to remain the country's second largest refinery after state-owned Indian Oil Corp.

"As on date the refinery is operating at 100 per cent capacity," the official said adding most of the expanded capacity would be to for export markets in North and South America, Gulf countries, Europe and some countries in Africa.

He said Reliance Industries has bid for acquiring 51

per cent stake in a refinery in Colombia. The Indian firm is pitched against Brazil's Petrobras and Venezuela's PDVSA for the 850 million dollar expansion of Cartegena refinery capacity to 140,000 barrels per day from the current capacity of 78,000 barrels per day.

Colombia is looking for a partner up to 51 per cent of the capital needed for the expansion and aims to award the project in the first quarter of next year.

The refinery would be independently operated by the winning company. State oil company Ecopetrol currently runs it.

The official said Reliance plans to shutdown down some units of its Jamnagar refinery in October for 42-days for maintenance purpose. The outage will affect supplies of LPG, petrol and diesel.