Reliance Industries has employed in its core operations group, currently putting together the ambitious project as many as 20 expatriates. Of these, a number are from Shell's international workforce, including professionals from West Asia and Canada.

Shell was the stage in Dhirubhai's life when Reliance was only a dream. Today, his dream project will sport brains handpicked from the giant he served, variously, as a petrol pump attendant, an accounting officer, and a clerk in a marketing subsidiary. Reliance Petroleum's 18 million tonnes per annum refinery implementation has seen aggressive recruitment from abroad, as well as from the Indian public sector. Among those who addressed journalists incourse of a presentation to journalists at Jamnagar on Tuesday was AP Choudhry, former executive director and chief of Indian Oil refineries, and later head of IOC's Centre of High Technology.

For projects such as power and other utilities, the aromatics division etc for which Reliance has wide experience, recruitment has been mainly from within the company: from the Patalganga and Hazira projects which have been fully implemented and are on stream. Currently, the company is going through intensive training of the workforce for which recruitment is largely complete. The company has began a process of classroom training, safety training, training at Hazira and Patalganga ,training in licensor's refineries abroad, training through simulators and is going through validation after each training module.