"RIL FOR CLEAN STORAGES IN US, EAST COAST AND GULF COAST"

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Reliance Industries will soon acquire clean storages in the U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast to sell huge volumes of fuel, a senior official said, putting in place its global infrastructure that will cement its swing-supplier role.

"We are looking for storages in the East Coast, the Gulf Coast and the West Coast... We are under process to acquire in East Coast and the Gulf Coast," the company official, who declined to be named due to company policy, told Reuters.

A Reliance spokesperson said: "We are looking for clean storage capacity in the U.S.".

It was not immediately clear if Reliance would lease or buy the storages.

The Reliance official did not disclose the timeframe or the capacity of the proposed storages, but trade sources said the size could be about 200,000-250,000 cubic metres (cu m) and the deal expected to take place by end-March.

The firm would use the storages to market huge volumes of oil products from its recently commissioned 580,000 barrels per day (bpd) refinery, owned by subsidiary Reliance Petroleum.

The new plant, sited next to the group's existing 660,000-bpd refinery, has turned Reliance's Jamnagar complex into the world's biggest oil facility.

Reliance has also recently started gasoline trading operations in the United States, adding liquidity to physical trading. The office located in Texas will trade gasoline both on the U.S. Gulf Coast and New York Harbor markets.