Reliance has announced successful and flawless completion of its ethane project, including commissioning of its ethane receipt and handling facilities and ethane cracking, at its Dahej manufacturing facility in Gujarat, India, in a world record time of less than three years.
Reliance is the first company to globally conceptualise large-scale imports of ethane from North America as feedstock for its cracker portfolio in India. The project involved seamless integration of several elements across a complex infrastructure value chain. This includes securing ethane refrigeration capacity in the US Gulf Coast; delivery of dedicated very large ethane carriers (VLECs) to carry ethane from the US Gulf Coast to the West Coast of India; construction of ethane receipt and handling facilities; and laying pipelines and upgrading crackers (to receive ethane) at Dahej, Hazira and Nagothane manufacturing facilities.
This successful start-up underlines the ability of Reliance to build world-scale capacities and infrastructure using complex technologies, such as marine transportation of cryogenic ethane, handling of ethane at minus 90 degrees Celsius, supply of ethane to the crackers in an energy efficient way and pumping ethane from Dahej to other locations. The execution of this project at this scale and magnitude is a first in the world.
The shale gas industry in North America has grown exponentially in the past five years. Consequently, ethane has become one of the most competitively priced feedstock for the US crackers.
The supply of ethane to the Reliance crackers at Dahej, Hazira and Nagothane will provide feedstock security and flexibility, enabling the company to select the most optimal feed mix based on market conditions. This will improve the cost competitiveness of the existing crackers and enable the company to optimise the portfolio in a volatile market environment.
