This story is from April 15, 2021

Mukesh Ambani sends oxygen from his refineries to aid India's Covid-19 fight

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani is diverting oxygen produced at his refineries to help India battle a savage coronavirus outbreak that’s paralysed the commercial capital as daily new infections spike by a record.
Mukesh Ambani sends oxygen from his refineries to aid India's Covid-19 fight
RIL has started supplying oxygen from Jamnagar to Maharashtra at no cost, according to a company official, who asked not to be identified due to internal policy. (Representative image)
NEW DELHI: Billionaire Mukesh Ambani is diverting oxygen produced at his refineries to help India battle a savage coronavirus outbreak that’s paralysed the commercial capital as daily new infections spike by a record.
Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd, which operates the world’s biggest refining complex in India, has started supplying oxygen from Jamnagar to Maharashtra at no cost, according to a company official, who asked not to be identified due to internal policy.

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The state will get 100 tonnes of the gas from Reliance, Eknath Shinde, urban development minister, said in a tweet.

India is in the grip of a second wave of Covid-19 infections that has caught the Centre and state governments unprepared, with media reporting that patients are dying due to a shortage of oxygen and hospital beds. Maharashtra is home to the financial hub of Mumbai where the fresh outbreak is most severe, and where Ambani officially resides and Reliance has its headquarters.

Separately, state-run Bharat Petroleum Corp has built up a stockpile of 20 tonnes of medical-grade oxygen at its Kochi refinery that can be readily offered, the company said in an emailed statement. It previously supplied 25 tonnes of oxygen for medical use.
Bharat Petroleum can further supply about 1.5 tonnes of oxygen daily from the Kochi plant, where it has a unit that can produce medical-grade oxygen, according to the statement.
Refineries can produce limited volumes of industrial oxygen in air-separation plants meant for nitrogen production. Medical-use oxygen can be extracted by scrubbing out other gases, such as carbon dioxide, to make it 99.9% pure.
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