True, but so far at a pretty small scale and with much of the equipment sourced from the US as far as I understand it. I don't think they've been able to get the costs down to profitable levels either, right?
Actually, India has one of the worlds largest refineries for extra heavy crude oil processing. The Reliance Jamnagar refinery have a crude capacity ~1.4 million barrels per day (bpd).
The Nayara refinery (Russian stakeholder) is rather smaller at 390–400 kbd. There are a few other state owned and private refineries in the South that can process heavy crude cumulatively upto a million bpd.
You are right that the equipment was from US (Lummus Technology). However, due to sanctions, the Nayara refinery has begun retrofitting from eastern suppliers.
It is sad that both Venezuela and Iran (and now Russia) are all now under West-enforced oil sanctions. Makes life difficult for poor nations that don't have native oil supply. It is not possible to compete with EU for economic oil purchase in the global market
