Nayara Energy’s CEO B. Anand said that the company is increasingly buying more extra-heavy crudes from the Middle East, West Africa, and Canada to replace similar grades from Venezuela. Anand noted that the company would continue to seek new sources of such grades with help from traders such as Trafigura, Rosneft, and United Capital Partners.
According to Anand, Nayara’s refining facilities have the flexibility to process a lot of new crude grades, but extra- heavy crude gives the company the best economic value. In 2017, a consortium of Rosneft, Trafigura, and UCP, took over Nayara, which was then known as Essar Oil, in a $12.9-billion deal. The transaction also included the Vadinar refinery, which has a capacity of 20 million tons/year and a complexity index of 11.8.
Anand also noted that Nayara’s expansion in the retail and petrochemical sectors continued to progress despite the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, the company announced an $850-million project to build a 450,000 tons/year polypropylene (PP) unit and a 200,000 tons/year MTBE plant as an expansion of the Vadinar refinery. The company has established 230 new outlets in 2020 despite the pandemic.
