Reliance Inks JV With Yemen Oil Firm For Refinery

Yemen''s Oil Minister Khalid Mahfoudh Dahah said on Tuesday that Reliance Industries Ltd will set up a 50,000 barrels-per-day refinery in a joint venture with Yemen''s Hood Oil company.The refinery will be built in 36 months and its capacity may be doubled at a later stage.RIL will have an obligation to sell products from the refinery in the domestic market for first five months and can export the products later, he said.RIL has been allotted two exploration blocks in a separate joint venture with Hood Oil, while the Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation has been awarded three blocks in Yemen, the minister said on the sidelines of the Petrotech 2007 industry conference.The minister said that new bidding rounds for oil blocks would be announced in the second half of the year. Yemen is expected to put five or six blocks on offer in the new bid round.