Trump Announces First New US Oil Refinery in 50 Years with Reliance Industries Investment

U.S. President Donald Trump recently shared a post on social media announcing a new oil refinery project in the United States.

He said that America First Refining is opening the first new oil refinery in the U.S. in about 50 years with the help of investment from India’s Reliance Industries Limited. The refinery will be located in Brownsville, Texas.

This announcement came while the White House was trying to calm concerns about rising energy prices. Prices have been increasing partly because of the ongoing Iran-Israel conflict.

Trump is considering several ways to reduce oil and gasoline prices. These options include releasing oil from emergency reserves and using military escorts for oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

The refinery project in Texas was originally being developed by a company called Element Fuels. In June 2024, Element Fuels said it had prepared the land and received the permits needed to build the refinery.

The planned refinery would be able to process about 160,000 barrels of oil per day.

Now, the website of Element Fuels redirects to the site of America First Refining, which Trump says will build the refinery.

The company plans to start construction in the second quarter of this year. It has also signed a 20-year agreement to sell the fuel it produces to Reliance Industries, a large energy company from India.

However, representatives from Reliance have not yet commented publicly about the deal.

The Trump administration supports a policy called “U.S. energy dominance”. This policy encourages the country to produce more oil, natural gas, and coal to reduce dependence on other countries.

Although U.S. oil production has increased greatly over the past 15 years because of shale oil drilling, many American refineries are old. Some have also closed in recent years, which has reduced the country’s ability to process crude oil.

The new Brownsville refinery will be designed to run entirely on US shale oil.

Building new refineries in the US is very difficult. Projects often fail because they are extremely expensive, require many government permits, and face environmental opposition. For example, in the mid-2000s, a $2.5 billion refinery project planned by Arizona Clean Fuels Yuma near Phoenix, Arizona, was cancelled because the developers could not get enough funding.