Nayara Energy says making steady progress in India expansion plan despite BP’s exit from Rosneft

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Nayara Energy Limited has said that it is making steady progress on its petrochemical expansion plans despite concerns that the British energy giant BP’s decision to exit its 20 percent stake in Russia’s Rosneft could impact its investments in India.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted BP to end its three-decades old relation with the company. The sudden exit of BP has triggered concerns over other Western companies operating in Russia. 

Rosneft owns a 49.13 percent stake in Nayara Energy, formerly Essar Oil Limited. Rosneft, along with a investment consortium comprising global commodity trading firm Trafigura and UCP Investment Group acquired the downstream and petrochemicals company in August 2017.

“Nayara Energy is an Indian company, focused on its growth plans to become one of the largest integrated energy and petrochemicals complexes within the country. Our endeavors are designed to fulfill the nation’s growing energy and petrochemical needs,” the company said in an email response to Moneycontrol. 

The company did not respond to Moneycontrol’s questions on how BP’s exit and the sanctions on Russia could potentially hurt Rosneft’s investment in India and subsequently Nayara’s growth plans. 

Nayara said, “We are making steady progress on our petrochemicals expansion, in a phased manner which is in line with our asset development strategy.”

In 2019, Nayara Energy had announced its plans to expand into petrochemicals with an investment of $750 million at its Vadinar plant in Gujarat. The company had said that this was the first phase of Nayara’s broader petrochemical expansion plans. The construction of the petrochemicals project is expected to be completed in 2023. 

The company owns and operates India’s second-largest single site refinery at Vadinar, which has a capacity of 20 million ton per annum.