India’s Reliance Industries is said to have leased the clean storage as it seeks to increase its presence in the United States, trade sources said.

Reliance, which operates the world’s biggest refining complex, aims to directly sell fuel in the US, the world’s biggest oil consumer, and had earlier leased 800,000 barrels of clean storage from American refiner Hess Corp. in the New York harbour.

One industry souce quoted said: “Reliance began supplying gasoline to the Bahamas storage from October. By the end of January it had supplied about 515,000 tonnes of gasoline to the Bahamas,” a source said.

The Nassau Guardian reported recently how a $350 million expansion at Vopak may be launched as soon as May, paving the way for around 600 new jobs to be created on the island of Grand Bahama.

It’s a project centered around the addition of 6 million barrels of storage at the oil storage facility, Managing Director of VOPAK Raymond Jones announced at the recent 12th annual Grand Bahama Business Outlook.

The company is looking to ink the particulars of the project within the next four to six weeks, with a December 2011 deadline for construction.

“This storage facility will be built to very modern standards, allowing us to do a series of blending opportunities and services on behalf of clients… going specifically into the U.S. and North American markets,” he said at the conference.

“This will [add] about 20 tanks of 250k barrels of storage and another ten tanks of about 100k barrels.

“The cost of this expansion we’re presently reviewing is $350m.”