Reliance Industries will export about 8-9 million tonnes of petroleum products or 33 per cent of Jamnagar refinery production this fiscal, mostly unchanged from 2002-03 figures, RIL group president P M S Prasad told reporters in New Delhi.

The export basket of RIL comprises of Aviation Turbine Fuel, diesel, gasoline and naphtha.

During 2001-02, export of RIL products accounted for Rs 8,476 crore (Rs 84.76 billion) in the Rs 33,117 crore (Rs 331.17 billion) total sales. RPL's mainstay export is diesel, despatching over 300,000 tonnes every month to destinations as far as Latin America.

RIL, which presently does not have a retail chain of its own, sells 13.1 million tonnes of its products annually to state-run oil retailing firms -- Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum Corporation and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation. Of this IOC picks up 7.5 million tonnes while the other two market the remaining equally.

"We hope to begin retailing petro products by March 2004 when our last phase of about 1000-1500 petrol stations would be in place," Prasad said.

RIL, which has secured a licence to set up 5,849 petrol stations throughout the country, has a contract with state oil firms till March 31, 2004 for selling its petro products.

IOC lifted 1.54 million tonnes of Superior Kerosene Oil from Jamanagar refinery for sale through its retail chain in 2002-03, 279,000 tonnes of petrol, 4.3 million tonnes of High Speed Diesel and 1.36 million tonnes of LPG.

RIL, which has already secured right of way for laying gas pipeline from Andhra Pradesh to Goa, was looking at various options for taking the gas to the consumers.

"One is we can build the gas distribution network on our own. The other option would be that we share the construction cost with companies who have or are expecting finds in the KG Basin," Prasad said while emphasising that nothing concrete has been finalised.

RIL had earlier put the in-place reserves at 9.46 tcf based on its four discoveries -- Dhirubhai-1, Dhirubhai-2, Dhibrubhai-3 and Dhirubhai-4.

He said RIL's current exploration programme has evaluated at less than 16 per cent of the total D6 Block area. A 2,500 square kilometre 3D seismic survey will be shot in October 2003, which will provide the basis for a second exploration drilling campaign.

The firm has declared gas find Dhirubhai-1 as commercial. It plans to recover at least 70 per cent of the estimated 4.1tcf in-place gas reserves from the well. Dhirubhai-1 can produce 40 million standard cubic metres per day of gas in two years time.

Dhiurbhai-2 is assessed to contain 0.16 tcf of reserves, Dhirubhai-3 3.5 tcf while Dhirubhai-4, on a different structure 10-km away from the previous three finds, is estimated to have 1.7 tcf reserves.

DGH has estimated development expenditure of $1.5-2 billion would be needed to put the discoveries in Block D6 to production. RIL holds 90 per cent interest in the Block D6 and the remaining is with Niko Resources of Canada.