Reliance Industries’ (RIL) decision to import ethane from the United States (U.S.) as feedstock for its petrochemicals plants in Dahej, Hazira and Nagothane increase the operating profit of the energy-to-telecom conglomerate by $400 million, a top official said.
Payback period
“We expect the investments of $1.5 billion to have payback period of 4 years,” Vipul Shah,COO, Petrochemicals, RIL told The Hindu.
The company sensed an opportunity in 2014 replacing costly naphtha and natural gas as feedstock for its petrochemical units with cheaper ethane available in the U.S. in large quantities because of shale oil boom.
In the process, RIL become the biggest importer of ethane from the U.S. in 2017, followed by INEOS.
RIL will ship about1.6 million tonnes per annum of ethane from the U.S. for its cracker portfolio in India. RIL has an ethane supply contract in place with Enterprise Product Partners out of their Morgan’s Point Terminal in the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Very Large Ethane Carriers (VLECs) are used to transport liquefied ethane from the U.S. to the Gujarat Chemical Port Terminal Company Limited’s terminal at Dahej, Gujarat.
For 2017 till May, RIL had imported 416 kilo tonnes of ethane, amounting to 9 VLEC cargoes, which is 19% more than INEOS.