New Delhi: After failed partnerships with oil biggies like British Petroleum and Saudi Aramco, Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) has roped in state-run Oil India Ltd to take stake in its 3.5-billion dollar Bhatinda refinery project in Punjab.
OIL, India's second largest oil producer, is likely to take 25 per cent stake in the 9-million tonne refinery that is scheduled to come-up by 2011 fiscal, HPCL chairman and managing director M B Lal said.
"We have offered OIL to become equal partners in the Bhatinda refinery," he told PTI over phone from Mumbai.
Promoters hold a maximum of 50 per cent in the Guru Govind Singh Refineries Ltd, the company implementing the project. "OIL can have as much equity as HPCL in the project," he said.
The OIL board had, on September 5, found the HPCL offer "attractive" but has not yet officially communicated its intent of picking up stake.
Lal said promoters have to pump in about Rs 6,000 crore equity in the Rs 14,144 crore project. After the promoters equity is tied up, GGSRL would make an initial public offering (IPO) for the rest of the equity.
Besides the project cost, another Rs 2,790 crore have to be spent on laying a 1,011-km pipeline from Mundra port in Gujarat to Bhatinda for transporting imported crude oil.
In March this year, British Petroleum walked out of the project as it found investing in refining and marketing in India unattractive. Prior to BP, Saudi Aramco of Saudi Arabia had walked out of the refinery project in 1998.
Comments
0 comment