RIL’s gasification overhaul a shift towards clean energy: Centrum

Reliance to restructure and repurpose gasification assets to position the company as a first-mover in the hydrogen ecosystem. The transfer, which will be carried out on a slump sale basis, will enable value unlocking in the syngas business with the induction of an investor.

Probal Sen, Senior Vice President at Centrum Broking said, “I think this goes back to the language that was used when they talked about the O2C deal being put on the back burner as well. Very clearly they mentioned that they would be looking at this energy business in a different context, they will be looking at it as one whole pie, including downstream petroleum and the renewable energy initiatives. If I remember the press release also talked about repurposing some of the existing Jamnagar plants to sort of fulfil those green energy aspirations. I think this is step one of that process.”

“Large refining process anyways produces hydrogen, which is called grey hydrogen, which is not really environmentally friendly. But I believe that that is what the intent is to move to first, blue hydrogen, which is slightly cleaner, basically this hydrogen along with carbon capture, and then sort of repurpose and combine these with the green hydrogen initiatives that they are anyway sort of looking to do as a separate factory altogether. So the purpose and the intent very clearly is to cut down on the traditional fuels, and repurpose some of the gas that is produced in the process to sort of move up into greener chemicals, speciality chemicals, as well as produce more of cleaner hydrogen as part of the overall integrated complex that they have.”