Reliance Industries' $4-bn investment threatened by global natural gas glut

A global glut in natural gas is threatening to undermine a $4 billion investment by Reliance Industries Ltd aimed at boosting profits at the world’s largest oil refining complex.

The project made all the sense in the world when energy magnate Mukesh Ambani’s conglomerate announced it in 2012: convert petroleum coke, or petcoke, one of the cheapest and dirtiest refinery by-products, into gas needed to power the massive Jamnagar complex on India’s west coast. Then it hit about three years of delays, and global gas markets crashed amid a growing supplies of liquefied cargoes from the US, Australia and Russia.

The 10 synthetic gasifiers that make up the project are now finally commissioned. But the imported LNG they’re meant to displace has fallen from about $15 per million British thermal units in 2012 to less than $5.

And that price slump has reduced the project’s viability, according to a person with knowledge of the company’s finances.

Reliance predicted in 2014 that the project would boost Jamnagar’s refining margins by as much as $2 a barrel. Now, Mumbai-based brokerage Centrum Broking Ltd sees an uplift of about $1.30 to $1.50 a barrel by the 2021-2022 fiscal year, according to a July 21 report by analysts Probal Sen and Akshay Mane.

“It’s not the most conducive environment to bring the petcoke project on stream,” said Somshankar Sinha, head of India equity research at Jefferies Financial Group Inc. “The LNG surplus has caused prices to fall much more than the usual decline in summer months,” the Mumbai-based analyst added. Jefferies said it expects a full ramp-up of Reliance’s project in financial year 2021.

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL)