RIL to set up refinery in Yemen

Reliance Industries will set up a 50,000-barrels per day refinery in Yemen, where it has already picked up stake in two oil blocks. Incidentally Reliance founder, the late Dhirubhai Ambani, began his career in an oil firm in Aden in Yemen.

The company has been already awarded onshore exploration blocks 34 and 37 in Yemen, each measuring around 7500-sq km and located on the border with Oman, from among the seven blocks offered by Yemen in its second licensing round. RIL also has exploration blocks in Oman, East Timor and Columbia.

According to Khalid Mahfoudh Dahah, Yemen's minister for oil and minerals, Reliance would partner with a local Yemeni oil company for this refinery..

The minister said the refinery would have a refining capacity of 50,000 barrels per day in the initial phase, which could be doubled later. RIL would have an obligation to sell products from the refinery in the Yemeni market for the first five months and there after commence exports.

The construction of the project would begin this year and be completed within 36 months.

RIL has a 25-per cent partnership in oil producing block 9 where Calvalley Petroleum of Canada is the operator with 50 per cent stake. The block currently produces 7,500 barrels of oil per day and the output will go up to 10,000 barrels this month.