Essar Oil restarts Jamnagar refinery; capacity up by 12%

Mumbai-based Essar Oil today said it has restarted its Vadinar refinery in Jamnagar district of Gujarat after more than two-week long shutdown that has raised its capacity to turn crude oil into fuel by 12 per cent.

"Essar Oil's Jamnagar refinery has re-commenced operations after its scheduled shutdown, which began on April 16," the company said in a statement.

The refinery re-started operations on May 3, a day earlier than the planned 18-day shutdown that was to end on May 4.

Essar was operating the refinery, situated just 5-km from Reliance Industries' twin refinery complex at Jamnagar, at 12.5-million tonne capacity before the shutdown. "It is now possible to run the refinery up to a capacity of 14 million tonnes per annum," the statement said.

"Further, all the works relating to maintenance, reliability improvements and jobs relating refinery expansion have been successfully completed," it said.

The company plans to expand refining capacity to 34 million tonnes by December 2010 and would set up another 18 million tonnes unit adjacent to it by December 2011.

Essar said it has over 1,000 petrol pumps in the country which it plans to expand to 5,000. It, however, did not give any time-frame for the expansion.