Saudi Aramco and Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) have agreed to a non-binding Letter of Intent (“LOI”) regarding a proposed investment in the Oil to Chemicals (O2C) division comprising the refining, petrochemicals and fuels marketing businesses of RIL. Saudi Aramco’s potential 20 percent stake is based upon an Enterprise Value of US$ 75 billion for the O2C division. This would be one of the largest foreign investments ever made in India.

RIL’s Jamnagar refinery is the largest and most complex refinery in the world, with deep integration of refining and petrochemical activities across multiple manufacturing facilities. The proposed investment would result in Saudi Aramco supplying 500 KBPD of Arabian crude oil to the Jamnagar refinery on a long term basis.

Mr Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries Limited said: “I am truly delighted to welcome Saudi Aramco, one of the largest business enterprises in the world, as a potential investor in our Oil to Chemicals division. We have a long-standing crude oil relationship with Saudi Aramco and we would be happy to see this further strengthened with this investment. Saudi Aramco’s interest is a strong endorsement of the quality of our assets and operations as well as of the potential of India.”

What would this mean for the corrosion mitigation in India? This would mean the high standards; practices and procedures followed by them would slowly and definitely percolate into the industry’s mindset or way of thinking.

In this issue, our main story tries to analyze the challenges faced by the industry, the trends that seem to be happening and the solutions that the industry offers, besides all our regular columns like new products and processes, case studies, technical features, etc., that should make for some interesting reading.