Essar Oil Ltd., which operates India’s second largest private sector refinery and the largest private sector oil retail network, on Friday, reported its highest-ever throughput at 20.95 million tonnes (mt) in FY2016-17, a 10% increase over 19.10 mt in the previous fiscal.

During the same period, retail sales went up by 75% to 2.8 million kilo-litres (KL) from 1.6 million KL, while retail network grew by almost 67%. Essar Oil had 3,499 operational outlets as on March 31, 2017, while 2,631 others were under various stages of implementation.

At 2.8 million KL, the retail sales volume also increased significantly by 75%, the company said in a statement here.

Lalit Kumar Gupta, Managing Director and CEO, Essar Oil, said the refinery, since the commencement of its commercial operations in May 2008 at Vadinar, achieved the highest-ever throughput. “Our retail growth was quite remarkable and we received Platts’ Global Energy Award for Downstream Company of the Year in December.”

Essar Oil is a fully integrated oil and gas company with strong presence across the hydrocarbon value chain—from exploration and production to refining and oil retail. The company owns India’s second largest single location refinery with a capacity of 20 mt at Vadinar in Jamnagar district of Gujarat and a complexity of 11.8, which is amongst the highest globally. The refinery is supported by a 58 mt deep draft port and captive power plants of 1,010 MW capacity. The company has a portfolio of onshore and offshore oil and gas blocks with about 1.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent in reserves and resources.

Notably, all the Essar assets at Vadinar-refinery, thermal power station and port-were acquired for USD 13 billion by Russia’s Rosneft and its associates in 2016 in what the Government of India stated was the biggest “FDI” in the country. The deal was signed in Goa by the two companies in the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is in the process of completion.

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