Essar Energy Transition Secures $300M Crude Facility Renewal with Petraco

• Business Partners and Financiers demonstrate continued market confidence in Essar Energy Transition’s performance, market positioning and strategic importance.
• Petraco Oil Company SA renewed crude facility agreement of US$300m for another three years.

 Essar Energy Transition is pleased to confirm it has successfully renewed US$300m crude facility between Essar Energy Transition Fuels and Petraco Oil Company SA demonstrating market confidence in the company’s performance, market position and strategic importance.

Essar Energy Transition Fuels, owner and operator of the Stanlow Refinery UK, is delivering strong commercial performance, following a landmark investment year with Essar Energy Transition Fuels also achieving its highest ever domestic sales and production since acquisition. It is investing in low-carbon energy solutions and the decarbonisation of its industrial assets.

The company has renewed a three-year, US$300m strategic crude and product facility. The transaction represents an important next step as Essar Energy Transition Fuel’s strengthens strategic relationships with leading industry players, like Petraco Oil Company SA. Petraco has been a valuable business partner for Essar over the years.

The facility enables Essar Energy Transition Fuels to diversify the crude sourcing and marketing options for its products. It further strengthens feedstock security in an increasingly volatile global energy market, enhancing Essar Energy Transition Fuel’s ability to respond to changing market conditions and capture value across its refining and trading activities. This facility also provides stability and strength to its capital structure.

Satish Vasooja, Chief Financial Officer at Essar Energy Transition Fuels, said, "We’re delighted to renew our partnership with Petraco. This important transaction demonstrates the strength of this strategic relationship and will ensure that we can build on our strong commercial performance.”

Alberto Salsiccia, Chief Financial Officer at Petraco Oil Company SA, said, "We’re pleased to have concluded this trading facility for next 3 years with Essar, a UK national energy player. This demonstrates Petraco’s varied ability to collaborate with business partners and drive mutual benefits.”

Essar Partners IRH on $500M Crude & Product Supply Facility to Boost Stanlow Refinery Resilience

Essar Group and International Resources Holding (IRH) today announced the successful execution of a USD 500 million crude sourcing facility and product supply facility between Essar Energy Transition Fuels and IRH Global Trading.

IRH, headquartered in Abu Dhabi, UAE, is a global mine-to-market platform that strategically invests in minerals critical to the energy transition and technological advancement. IRH Global Trading is a wholly owned subsidiary of IRH, and a key global energy trading and liquidity provider.

Essar Group is a global conglomerate with over five decades of entrepreneurial experience in conceptualising, investing, building, and operating world-class assets across the energy, infrastructure, metals & mining, technology & retail sectors. Through Essar Energy Transition Fuels, owner and operator of the Stanlow Refinery UK, the Group is investing in low-carbon energy solutions and the decarbonisation of its industrial assets.

The facility enables Essar Energy Transition Fuels to diversify the crude sourcing and marketing options for its products while optimising its working capital arrangement. It also strengthens feedstock security in an increasingly volatile global energy market, enhancing Essar Energy Transition Fuel’s ability to respond to changing market conditions and capture value across its refining and trading activities.

The transaction represents an important step in Essar Energy Transition Fuel’s strategy to forge and strengthen relationships with leading industry players, like IRH Global Trading. The agreement also underscores IRH’s role in enabling secure and efficient energy flows across international markets, while supporting operational optimisation for downstream refining assets.

Prashant Ruia, Chairman of Essar Energy Transition, said

We are delighted to partner with IRH Global Trading on this strategically important transaction for our Stanlow refinery in the UK.

Ali Rashed Al Rashdi, CEO of IRH, said:

We are pleased to partner with Essar Energy Transition Fuels to enhance supply security and operational resilience at a critical UK refining hub.

Bharat Petroleum Develops Novel Technology to Test Crude Oil Quality

The country's second largest national oil marketer Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd has developed a novel technology to test the quality of crude oil at a fraction of the cost and time that it takes now through the lengthy lab tests.

The technology, which has a number of patents including those from the US and the EU, is a 'crude horoscope predictor tool' called BPMarrk, which can optimise varied properties from the crude.

The company is also in talks with leading international players in the crude assaying industry like Aspen, the largest in the segment, Honeywell, and Emerson, R Ramachandran, Director (Refineries), at BPCL said.

"The traditional way of assaying takes 30-45 days for a complete testing and the cost averages at Rs 25 lakh. But the BPMarrk takes around 30 minutes for a four-stage test. We can offer it at a fraction of the present cost but we haven't decided on the pricing part yet," he told PTI.

Ramachandran also said the company is planning to use the technology as an advance control product for product optimisation and is going to apply for patents for this as well.

On talks with American bodies, he said, "we have made presentations to Aspen, Emerson and Honeywell but no deal has been finalised yet".

BPCL has been developing the technology since FY16 and reached commercial production stage two years ago.

Since then, it has made a detailed presentation to the American Petroleum Institute which is the global body that codifies the testing standards for the industry. The institute was keen to develop this tool as an alternate standard, provided BPCL shared the entire details, but the company refused, a source at the company said.

A salient and industry-friendly use of the tool is that it can help update the crude assays of oil wells wherein the properties get changed with ageing, according to Ramachandran.

"Gone are the days of lengthy laboratory tests called assaying for crude. The R&D team of Bharat Petroleum has developed a crude horoscope predictor tool called 'BPMarrk' to correctly predict crude oil properties," he said.

Describing their innovation as a game-changer, Ramachandran said BPMarrk can predict around 500 properties of any crude using four parameters and can help generate the output within an hour compared to the other conventional processes which require three-four weeks of laboratory testing.

The tool has been built by testing more than 100 types of crudes from different regions.

This universal tool can be used by multiple stakeholders across the crude value-chain for fast business and operational decisions related to crude buying/ booking and price negotiations.

BPMarrk can also enable oil suppliers, international trades and supply-chain optimisation for advanced planning, crude selection and also for process engineers for unit-level optimisation of refinery operations.

BPCL is in the process of partnering with a leading international consultant for real-time optimisation.

The development could be highly useful for small downstream players like domestic companies and standalone refiners, given the fact that industry majors like Aramco, Exxon, Shell, Total or BP would have their own independent tools to do faster assaying as they are all into the entire value chain of the oil and gas sector, say analysts. PTI BEN