RIL AGM: Nita Ambani hails 'superhuman effort' by staff to provide free oxygen to COVID-19 patients

Reliance Industries repurposed their Jamnagar refinery to produce medical-grade oxygen as the country faced an acute shortage of oxygen during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in April and May this year.

RIL’s executive director Nita Ambani on Thursday hailed the contribution of their staff in resolving the medical oxygen issue.

“Traditionally, Reliance Industries has never produced medical grade liquid oxygen. Yet when the need arose, we repurposed our Jamnagar refinery within days, to produce high-purity medical grade liquid oxygen and, within two weeks, we ramped up production to a massive 1100 Metric tonnes per day,” she said while addressing the company’s 44th virtual annual general meeting.

Ambani claimed that it would normally take over a year to set up a new medical-grade oxygen plant of this capacity. However, it was a “super-human effort’ by the Reliance engineers, who put in more than 85,000 man-hours of work in less than 10 days to make it possible, she said.

The RIL executive director said the company is currently producing over 11 percent of India's medical-grade liquid oxygen, the highest by a single company at a single location. “We are providing this Pran Vayu – oxygen – to one out of every 10 COVID patients in India,” she said, adding that they are offering the service to the nation free of cost.

Ambani said that RIL also addressed India's serious bottleneck of tankers to facilitate the oxygen supply chain.

“Reliance procured 100 new medical-grade oxygen tankers both from within India and other parts of the world, like Germany, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Netherlands, Belgium, Thailand, Indonesia, and put them into service within two weeks,” she said.

RIL also helped in installing oxygen generators in several hospitals across the country, Ambani said as she lauded, “all our engineers, doctors, and frontline warriors for working selflessly and tirelessly for Mission Oxygen.”