Billionaire Mukesh Ambani-run Reliance Industries on Friday said it was "few days away" from starting its new oil refinery at Jamnagar in Gujarat, which is likely to have a sobering effect on the global oil prices.
"The refinery is a few days, if not months, away from commissioning," RIL President (Refinery Business) P Raghavendran said.
He, however, refused to put a date to the commissioning.
"We have promised before December (and) we are on schedule. I cannot give you a specific date."
Separately, a company official said test runs for the 580,000 barrels per day (29 million tons) refinery being set up by Reliance Petroleum, a unit of RIL, at a cost of USD six billion, will begin in new few days.
The new unit is coming up in a Special Economic Zone adjacent to RIL's existing 660,000 barrels per day (33 million tons) refinery at Jamnagar.
The company, the official said, is hoping for the repeat performance of 1999 commissioning of the first refinery when full capacity was reached within days.
"We will commission in phases and if everything goes well we hope to repeat the first refinery's commissioning which was done in days because we did not have any problem," he said. "Initially, we will produce Euro-IV grade petrol and diesel and will upgrade to Euro-V once more complicated units like DHDS are commissioned," he added.
Fuel from the refinery will be mostly exported to the US and Europe.
Raghavendran, speaking at the India Energy Conference, said the two refineries together with Essar Oil's 250,000 bpd refinery at Vadinar will emerge as the largest source of diesel, petrol and aviation turbine fuel.