A labyrinth of steel and concrete, one-third the area of Manhattan, is rising on the coastline of Jamnagar, India. That's where Reliance Industries is spending $6 billion to expand a massive refining hub into the world's biggest and most sophisticated oil facility. When it's done, it will process 5% of the world's gasoline. Once the facility is up to speed, 100% of its refined products will be exported, with 40% expected to make their way to the U.S.
Jamnagar's facilities sprawl over 13 square miles and reach heights of more than 30 stories.Make no little plans," the architect Daniel Burnham once said. When it comes to oil refining, that could certainly be the slogan of Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries and India's richest man. In the late '90s, Reliance spent $6 billion and employed 75,000 workers to build a world-class oil refinery at Jamnagar, India, a seaside town in the northwest state of Gujarat, in just four years. "This is not merely a refinery," Ambani said at the time, "this is an inspiration." Now Reliance is more than doubling the size of the facility, which, when completed in December, will claim the title of the world's biggest (overtaking a South Korean complex), with an output of 1.2 million gallons of gasoline per day, or about 5% of global capacity.
The expansion, begun in October 2005, is being managed by San Francisco-based Bechtel. It will cost another $6 billion and employ 70,000 workers to lay 13 million feet of pipe feeding 42 flare towers, which burn off residue gas created when converting crude oil into gasoline and diesel. The refinery expansion will use 28,000 tons of structural steel. About 1.5 cubic meters of cement - enough to fill 600 Olympic pools - have already been poured.
Reliance plans to aim Jamnagar's spigots westward, at the U.S. and Europe, where it's too expensive and politically difficult to build new refineries. Chevron is a 5% investor in the expanded refinery, which will be sophisticated enough to turn harder-to-process heavy crude into fuels that meet the highest environmental standards. The bulked-up Jamnagar will be able to move markets: Singapore traders expect a drop in fuel prices as soon as it's going full tilt.
(http://money.cnn.com)
Jamnagar's facilities sprawl over 13 square miles and reach heights of more than 30 stories.Make no little plans," the architect Daniel Burnham once said. When it comes to oil refining, that could certainly be the slogan of Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries and India's richest man. In the late '90s, Reliance spent $6 billion and employed 75,000 workers to build a world-class oil refinery at Jamnagar, India, a seaside town in the northwest state of Gujarat, in just four years. "This is not merely a refinery," Ambani said at the time, "this is an inspiration." Now Reliance is more than doubling the size of the facility, which, when completed in December, will claim the title of the world's biggest (overtaking a South Korean complex), with an output of 1.2 million gallons of gasoline per day, or about 5% of global capacity.
The expansion, begun in October 2005, is being managed by San Francisco-based Bechtel. It will cost another $6 billion and employ 70,000 workers to lay 13 million feet of pipe feeding 42 flare towers, which burn off residue gas created when converting crude oil into gasoline and diesel. The refinery expansion will use 28,000 tons of structural steel. About 1.5 cubic meters of cement - enough to fill 600 Olympic pools - have already been poured.
Reliance plans to aim Jamnagar's spigots westward, at the U.S. and Europe, where it's too expensive and politically difficult to build new refineries. Chevron is a 5% investor in the expanded refinery, which will be sophisticated enough to turn harder-to-process heavy crude into fuels that meet the highest environmental standards. The bulked-up Jamnagar will be able to move markets: Singapore traders expect a drop in fuel prices as soon as it's going full tilt.
(http://money.cnn.com)
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