Indian Nayara Energy, led by Rosneft, will invest $850 mln to expand into petrochemical

Delhi, July 17 - Neftegaz.RU. After Rosneft acquired Essar Oil's assets, including its fuel retail outlets, about 2 years back, Nayara is making ambitious plans to increase its fuel retails to over 7,000 by 2020.

Nayara Energy signed 2 Memorandums of Understanding with the Government of Gujarat. Under the terms of the MoU, Nayara Energy has committed to invest $850 million towards Phase 1 of the expansion plan which will see the establishment of new refinery and petrochemical units. Nayara plans to set up a 450,000 tonnes a year Polypropylene plant.

This investment will contribute significantly towards the development of Devbhumi Dwarka district as a petrochemical hub in India. With the expansion plans, Nayara will remain the largest private fuel retailer in the country. Other private players like Reliance Industries and Shell trail Nayara by a huge margin.

While Reliance has over 1,300 fuel retail outlets, Shell operates about 120 fuel retail stations. Shell, which is an expansion mode, has acquired land for another 150 stations, which are under-construction and is also planning to open 1,200 retail stations across India over next 10 years.

CEO of Nayara Energy, B. Anand said: “With our investments and the retail expansion that is underway, we plan to optimize India’s energy basket and offer energy to everyone.”

In August 2017, the company was acquired by international investors Russian Rosneft and an investment consortium Trafigura and UCP Investment Group.

Nayara Energy owns India’s 2nd largest single site refinery at Vadinar, Gujarat with a current capacity of 20MMTPA. It is one of the world’s most modern and complex refineries with a complexity of 11.8, which is amongst the highest globally.