Essar refinery to be ready by June '06

Essar Oil is planning to commission its 10.5 million tonne refinery at Vadinar, Gujarat by June 2006, and the company plans to scale up the number of petrol stations to 5,000 in the next few years.

"We have achieved financial closure and work at the refinery site is progressing at full pace. We have already completed 70% of the construction work, and the refinery would be commissioned in 13-14 months," Essar group general manager Kuldeep Kohli said today.

Essar Oil would be the first private sector firm after Reliance Industries to set up a refinery - an arena till now dominated by the public sector.

Kohli said the refinery capacity would be scaled up to 12 million tonne by June 2007.

Essar, which has a licence to set up 1,700 petrol stations in the country, has already put in place 250 retail outlets, and plans to complete the sanctioned numbers by the time the refinery comes up.

"Ultimately, the number of retail outlets would go up to 5,000. This may take 2-3 years' time," Kohli said.