Reliance's Jamnagar refinery, an industrial marvel, turns 25

Jamnagar (Gujarat) [India], December 29 (ANI): Reliance's Jamnagar refinery, which happens to be the conglomerate's first, turned 25 years old this week. Twenty-five years ago, on December 28, 1999, Reliance launched its first refinery at Jamnagar.
Jamnagar has become the world's refining hub - an engineering marvel that is India's pride.
At that time, many experts had said that it would be impossible for an Indian company to set up the world's largest refinery in three years. But Reliance managed to achieve that in a record time of just 33 months, notwithstanding the lack of infrastructure and a severe cyclone that had hit Jamnagar then.
When Reliance Industries' Founder Chairman Dhirubhai Ambani wanted to pursue his long-cherished dream of setting up a refinery, he was offered land in the barren and desolate region off Jamnagar, near a sleepy village called Motikhavdi.
Leading world-class project consultants advised Dhirubhai against investing in the desert-like region that did not have roads, electricity, or even sufficient drinking water. They had warned that mobilising manpower, materials, technical experts and every other input in such wilderness would require extraordinary efforts.
Dhirubhai defied all the naysayers and went ahead with his dream. He wanted to create not just an industrial plant but a Nandanwan. Between 1996 and 1999, he and his highly motivated team went on to create an engineering marvel at Jamnagar.
The first private-sector refinery of India single-handedly added 25 per cent to India's total refining capacity. This one project completely transformed the barren region into a bustling industrial hub.
Moreover, Reliance's focused efforts created a green zone in the arid land, resulting in the lowering of temperature and improved rainfall in the region. The Jamnagar refining complex now boasts of Asia's largest mango orchard, with over 1.5 lakh mango trees.
The huge mangrove belt there has become a haven for migratory birds, and the surrounding dense forest houses the Vantara - the one-of-its-kind rehabilitation home for rescued wild species.
Reliance spent over USD 3.4 billion in capital costs to create the world's largest refinery with 27 million tonne capacity.
The industrial city of Jamnagar is set to become the cradle of Reliance's New Energy business, with the Dhirubhai Ambani New Energy Giga Complex commissioning soon.
In FY99, India's total imports of gasoline and diesel stood at over 10 million tonnes, which dropped to zero once the Jamnagar refinery started operations.
Today, with 1.4 million barrels per day - nearly 1.5 per cent of entire world's refining capacity - Jamnagar is the world's largest integrated, single-site refinery complex.
What started as a state-of-the-art refinery with a petrochemical complex at Jamnagar in 1999, has today emerged world's largest single-location manufacturing complex spread across 25,000 acres.
Jamnagar underwent three phases of expansion in the last three decades. The first was India's largest and world's seventh largest refinery that was commissioned in July 1999.
The refinery was accompanied by a few petrochemical units, an all-weather port, storage tankages, captive power plant, and state-of-the-art evacuation infrastructure. At Rs 25,000 crore, it represented the largest industrial investment ever made by an Indian group at any one location.
In 2006, Reliance embarked upon an even greater journey to set up a second refinery at Jamnagar with even greater complexity.
On December 28, 2008, on founder Chairman Dhirubhai Ambani's 76th Birth Anniversary, the second refinery was commissioned.
The third phase which lasted from 2014-2018 added more downstream processing units, making Jamnagar a real 'supersite' - the largest in the world, and one of the most unique globally in the energy industry.
Today, the Jamnagar refinery complex houses some of the world's largest units such as the Fluidised Catalytic Cracker (FCC), Coker, Alkylation, Paraxylene, Polypropylene, Refinery Off-Gas Cracker (ROGC), and Petcoke gasification plants. (ANI)