NEW DELHI: Reliance Industries, owner of the world’s biggest refining complex, shipped in 12 percent less oil in April compared with the previous month ahead of planned maintenance shutdown of some units at its 580,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) plant in western India, according to data obtained from trade sources and ship-tracking services on the Thomson Reuters terminal.
Reliance, which has a diversified crude slate and shifts purchases to maximise revenue,bought about 1.19 million bpd last month, marginally higher than a year earlier. Reliance, which had received Iranian oil in March after a gap of six years, did not receive shipments from Tehran in April. The share of Latin American and African oil in Reliance’s overall imports declined in the first four months of 2016, as the company has shifted sourcing from dated Brent-linked markets to the Middle East.
The share of Middle Eastern crude in Reliance’s overall imports rose to about 57 percent in January-April from about 47 percent a year ago, the data showed. During the same period, African grades accounted for about 6 percent of the crude purchased, compared with about 10 percent a year earlier, while Latin American oil’s share shrank to about a third from 43 percent. Reliance’s two advanced refineries in the state of Gujarat in western India can together process 1.2 million bpd of oil, or about 26 percent of India’s overall capacity.
