Jamnagar

“The upstream has always been the more glamorous part of the industry,” write Barclays Capital analysts today, “as it generated economic rents, rents which were further protected by OPEC policy, and which also generated most of the past and the present leaders of the major international oil companies.”

By contrast, crude oil refining, as well as being less glamorous, has the drawbacks of being seen as a value destroyer and subject to vagaries of high exit costs, protectionism and ‘perverse responses to price incentives’.

But it has one thing in common with more bouyant upstream world: trends in non-OECD countries are increasing influencing the OECD refining market.