India should boost its petrochemicals production to meet local demand and counter China’s growing global lead in the sector, a senior executive at India’s top private refiner, Reliance Industries, said on Friday.
India needs to bolster its petrochemicals presence as China is taking over “the entire petrochemical industry”, Vikram Sampat, senior vice-president, strategy and business development, for the polyester chain at Reliance Industries, said at an industry conference, as carried by Reuters.
China’s petrochemicals expansion has created a surplus on the market in the past year, reducing global margins.
India’s petrochemicals demand is set to surge with robust economic growth in the country.
Demand for petrochemicals in India is expected to remain resilient as consumption of products is rebounding, executives in the industry said earlier this year.
India’s petrochemicals demand will be a bright spot among the major markets, amid a slowdown in demand in other markets, most notably China, and new supply coming from new plants in Asia and the Middle East, according to the executives who spoke to Reuters on the sidelines of the India Energy Week 2025 conference.
Weaker global demand has depressed petrochemical margins in recent months.
But Indian refiners have been mostly spared from very low margins because they produce their own petrochemical feedstock naphtha, Rystad Energy’s analyst Pankaj Srivastava told Reuters.
India is positioning itself for a petrochemical boom, with $87 billion expected over the next decade to meet surging demand. As more of its citizens rise into the middle class, the need for petrochemical-based products—from plastics to fertilizers—is set to soar. According to India’s oil minister, Hardeep Singh Puri, this growing demand opens a window for significant investment as India’s per capita consumption of petrochemicals continues to lag behind developed nations.
State-owned Indian Oil Corporation, the biggest refiner in India, plans to invest in petrochemicals capacities as it has the cost advantage of using naphtha and natural gas from its refinery outputs as feedstock, IndianOil chairman AS Sahney told the NDTV Profit outlet this week.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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