MOSCOW (MRC) -- Reliance Industries, the operator of India’s largest oil refinery, started trading crude and refined products in Singapore this month as it seeks to expand supplies to markets including Indonesia and Australia, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.
The Mumbai-based company currently trades products including naphtha and fuel oil from the Indian city, according to Mike Omar, the head of Reliance Global Energy Services.
The Singapore unit has joined the trade ministry’s global traders program, which offers lower tax rates to businesses that set up trading operations in the country, he said.
"Singapore will have its own trading book," Omar said. "We’re looking to grow the manpower size over time. The increase will be dependent on the growth of the portfolio."
Reliance will lease storage facilities in Singapore to blend gasoil, or diesel, and gasoline to supply the Southeast Asian and Australian markets, according to Omar. Singapore is Asia’s biggest oil-trading center.
Reliance, which operates the Jamnagar refining complex in western Gujarat state, with a total capacity of 1.24 million bpd, also exports gasoline to the US. The company will continue to trade crude and fuels from Mumbai, Omar said.
India has shipped 183,000 bbl of the fuel to the US this year, data from the Energy Information Administration in Washington show. That’s down from 518,000 bbl for all of last year and 2.7 million bbl in 2010.
Singapore supports international traders who set up physical trading and corporate functions in the city-state, said International Enterprise, a unit of the Trade and Industry Ministry. It declined to provide details of tax rates offered to Reliance.
As MRC wrote before, Reliance Industries is implementing a new project to source 1.5 million tpy of ethane feedstock from the US to feed its crackers in India.
Reliance Industries is one of the world's largest producers of polymers. The company's polymer production in 2010-11 (polypropylene, polyethylene and polyvinyl chloride) made 4,094 kilo tonnes.
MRC