Mumbai, July 01: Reliance Industries Ltd has started its second crude unit at its 580,000 barrels a day new refinery in Gujarat this week ahead of planned maintenance shutdown at its old plant, trade sources said on Wednesday.
Reliance plans to shut almost half of its 660,000 bpd old refinery this month for maintenance for about two weeks.
The second refinery has two crude distillation units (CDUs) of equal capacity. The first CDU was commissioned in December and commercial production from the plant began from March 15.
The sources said the unit was commissioned either on Sunday or Monday.
“They always had the plans to start the second CDU at the new refinery before going for maintenance at the old refinery. The partial shutdown at the old refinery is expected to begin sometime this week around July 4,” said a trade source.
The second trade source said: “The crude unit has been started and is under stabilisation. Crude circulation is on and Reliance has already got some products and they are checking the quality.
No comment was available from Reliance.
The sources said the second CDU at the new refinery would stablise by this weekend.
They also said Reliance had restarted the 100,000 bpd vacuum gas oil hydrotreater at its old refinery this week.
Full scale commissioning of the new plant will turn Jamnagar into the world’s biggest complex processing 1.24 million bpd of crude.
—Agencies