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Informist, Wednesday, Mar. 11, 2026

MUMBAI – America First Refining Wednesday said it had received a "9-figure" investment from a "global supermajor" for an oil refinery in Texas, US. While the US company did not name Reliance Industries Ltd. in the release, US President Donald Trump had thanked the Indian company for investing in setting up the first new refinery in the US in decades.

America First Refining said it had signed a 20-year deal with the same "global supermajor", which will buy oil from it and refine, process, and distribute it. The US company expects to start construction of the refinery at the Port of Brownsville from April.

The refinery will have a capacity to process around 60 million barrels of US light shale oil annually. The refinery's location at a deep-water port in the US will facilitate distribution to domestic and international markets, America Refining said. The refinery will produce some of the cleanest gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel at scale in the US, the company said.

As part of the agreement, the refinery will purchase and process US oil worth $125 billion and produce refined products worth $175 billion, which will be sold in the US and international markets. This will improve the US trade balance by $300 billion, the US company said.

The data provided does not support the claim that the new refinery will correct the US trade balance by $300 billion. While the US trade balance will improve due to the exports of refined products as opposed to the earlier export of crude oil, the incremental gain to the trade balance will only be the incremental value added price of refined products as opposed to the value of the crude oil exported earlier. If the US was earlier exporting light shale oil, the incremental gain to its trade account would be only about $50 billion a year, reflecting the difference between crude prices and refined product prices. If the US was not exporting this light shale oil, the gain to the US trade balance would be $175 billion, which is the price of the refined products that the new refinery will produce, but only if the refinery exports all that is produced.  

Reliance Industries' refinery in Jamanagar has a capacity of processing 1.40 million barrels per day of crude oil. For the December quarter, Reliance Industries reported a consolidated net profit of INR 186.45 billion on revenue of nearly INR 2.70 trillion. At 0959 IST, shares of the company traded at INR 1,399 on the National Stock Exchange, down 0.7% from the previous close.  End

US$1 = INR 91.94

IST, or Indian Standard Time, is five-and-a-half hours ahead of GMT

Reported by Anshul Choudhary

Edited by Tanima Banerjee

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