The Hindu : Business : HPCL offers stake in Bhatinda

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Thursday, Oct 05, 2006
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HPCL offers stake in Bhatinda

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) has offered a 50 per cent equity stake to Oil India Limited (OIL) in the proposed $3.3 billion Bhatinda refinery project.

Disclosing this here on Wednesday, HPCL Chairman and Managing Director M. B. Lal said the promoters could hold a maximum of 50 per cent in the Guru Govind Singh Refineries Limited, the company implementing the project.

He told newspersons that OIL's initial response to the offer was encouraging but the final numbers would depend on its due diligence of the project.

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 balance of the equity.

In addition, he said, HPCL was looking at a partnership with OIL to buy oil and gas assets abroad. HPCL would invest about Rs. 800 crore to set up a delayed coker unit at its Visakhapatnam refinery to produce clearner fuels.

Meanwhile, the Chairman of Indian Oil Corporation, Sarthak Behuria, said the softening of world oil prices was allowing oil companies to make some marginal profits on auto fuels.

He said the company was making a profit of Rs 1.50 a litre on petrol while it was marginally negative on diesel at 13 paise a litre.

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