Essar Oil plans over Rs 1,600 crore investment to upgrade its Vadinar refinery, enhancing capacity, crude processing, and refining margins, positioning it among the world’s most complex refineries.
Essar Oil said it plans to spend more than Rs 1,600 crore upgrading its Vadinar refinery in Gujarat, in a move it says will lift gross refining margin by $1.50 a barrel. The company said Rs 400 crore had already been spent during a 28-day planned shutdown last September and October, with a further Rs 1,200 crore to be deployed over the next two to three years.
The refinery work included converting the VGO-HT unit into a mild hydrocracker and adding capacity to process high-acid crude, allowing the plant to turn all of its vacuum gas oil into higher-value products. C Manoharan, Essar Oil’s refinery director, said the changes had enabled the company to process more ultra-heavy and high-TAN crude and improve its product mix. Lalit Kumar Gupta, the company’s managing director and chief executive, said the group wanted to make the facility one of the world’s best and expected earnings to improve as the refinery returned to full availability. Essar Oil also said the Vadinar complex, which it described as one of the world’s more complex refineries, had processed 91 different crudes and remained a major supplier to India’s fuel market.
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