RIL to double ethylene capacity

The Jamnagar plant of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) has become home to the world’s largest operating refinery off-gas cracker (ROGC). With this, RIL has joined the distinguished league of top five petrochemical producers globally. This has also doubled RIL’s ethylene production capacity, which is now close to 4 MMTPA at five of its manufacturing sites. RIL has successfully commissioned and achieved design throughput of the world’s first ever and largest ROGC complex of 1.5 MMTPA capacity along with downstream plants and utilities.

The ROGC complex is a core component of RIL’s most innovative and world-scale J3 project at its integrated refinery-petrochemicals complex at Jamnagar.

“With the commissioning of ROGC complex, the largest ever expansion of RIL’s petrochemicals portfolio comes to a flawless completion. This is one of the largest capital expenditure programme globally in the sector in recent times. It epitomises RIL’s core strategy of continuously pursuing opportunities for cost optimisation and efficiency enhancement through vertical integration across the value chain,” the company said in a press release.

The ROGC complex has a unique configuration as it uses off-gases from RIL’s two refineries at Jamnagar as feedstock. This innovative approach of integration with refineries provides a sustainable cost advantage, making ROGC competitive with respect to the crackers in Middle-East and North America which have feedstock cost advantage.

ROGC is the latest addition to RIL’s existing cracker portfolio, consisting of cracker facilities at Nagothane in Maharashtra and Hazira, Dahej and Vadodara in Gujarat. There are nearly 270 ethylene plants globally with a combined capacity of over 170 MMTPA. RIL’s combined ethylene capacity is now close to 4 MMTPA at five of its manufacturing sites. With ROGC and imported ethane, RIL has one of the most competitive and flexible cracker portfolio.