Reliance Petroleum is likely to begin production of Euro-III grade fuel from its under- contruction refinery at Jamnagar by September end or early October, even as the company is scouting for oil storage facilities globally to market products.
Trial runs at the 580,000 barrels per day (29 million tonnes a year) refinery will begin in August, a senior company official said. The refinery is likely to start producing Euro-III grade petrol and diesel by September end or early October and Euro-IV grade fuel by end of the year.
Pre-commissioning activities are proceeding at a hectic pace with necessary support infrastructure facilities already under commissioning, he said, adding that the company will buy extra crude oil from Saudi Arabia in August to fill up tanks.
Reliance Petroleum, a unit of India's largest private firm Reliance Industries, had originally targeted December for the completion of the project. Chevron Corp of US has 5 per cent stake in RPL and has time till March 2009 to raise it to 29 per cent.
The official said the company is looking at acquisition of oil storages in Singapore, Mediterranean, Europe, US and Gulf to stock clean fuel from the export-oriented refinery closer to their market.
The storages are to serve as intermediate points to tap consumption centres particularly in Europe and US, its main market for the premium fuels.
Industry sources said it has already bought some petroleum storage tanks in the Caribbean and was looking at some others in Panama.