In a bid to become a net zero-carbon company by 2035, Reliance Industries has procured world’s first consignment of ‘carbon-neutral oil’ from the US. Operating the world's largest single location oil refining complex at Jamnagar in Gujarat with capacity of 68.2 million tonnes a year, the company got 2 million barrels of consignment Permian basin, the US supplier said in a statement.

Oxy Low Carbon Ventures (OLCV), a division of US oil major Occidental, delivered carbon-neutral oil to Reliance, the firm said. "This transaction, which was arranged in conjunction with Macquarie Group's Commodities and Global Markets group (Macquarie), is the energy industry's first major petroleum shipment for which greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with the entire crude lifecycle, well head through combustion of end products, have been offset," it said.

Oxy Low Carbon Ventures and Macquarie will offset carbon dioxide equivalent to that associated with the production, delivery and refining of the crude oil and the use of the resulting product through the retirement of carbon offset credits. This will make the oil 'carbon-neutral'.

The Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) Sea Pearl containing the carbon-neutral oil unloaded the cargo at Jamnagar on January 28. "This transaction is a first step in the creation of a new market for climate-differentiated crude oil," the statement said.

It is also a bridge to the development of a further differentiated petroleum product, net-zero oil, which Occidental intends to eventually produce through the capture and sequestration of atmospheric CO2 via industrial-scale direct air capture (DAC) facilities and geological sequestration.