IOC to bid for Cairn's oil and gas assets
Thursday, 29 May 2003, 19:30 IST   |    1 Comments
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NEW DELHI: The State-run Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) will bid for acquiring Scottish explorer Cairn Energy PlcÂ’s oil and gas assets in the Krishna Godavari basin, off the Andhra coast, company chairman M S Ramachandran said Monday. "We will bid for KG basin assets of Cairn Energy by May 30, the last date for putting in initial bids," Ramachandran was quoted as saying. IOC was interested in Cairn EnergyÂ’s shallow water block KG-OS/6 and deepwater block KG-DWN-98/2, where the Scottish firm has discovered one trillion cubic feet of gas reserves and small quantities of oil. The countryÂ’s largest oil refiner had initially evinced interest in bidding for CairnÂ’s India assets in partnership with state exploration firm Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC). But ONGC declined the offer saying it wanted to bid alone. Besides ONGC, other firms looking at Cairn assets include state-owned gas firm GAIL and British oil and gas major BG Group. Cairn, which has set up a data room in Edinburgh, has also sent feelers to Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL). ONGC had earlier bid for CairnÂ’s Krishna-Godavari basin deepwater block KG-DWN-98/2, shallow water block KG-OS/6 and CB/OS-2 block in Cambay basin. It, however, did not bid for CairnÂ’s 22.5 per cent stake in 65,000 barrels per day Ravva oil and gas field. While Cairn is seeking to divest its stake in all its properties including Ravva field, it is not selling the RJ-ON-90/1 block in Rajasthan, the site of recent 20 million tonnes of oil find, and the previous Saraswati discovery that is estimated to have 14 million tonnes of in-place oil reserves. Cairn has made five hydrocarbon discoveries in the CB/OS-2 Block since 2000 - Lakshmi gas, Lakshmi oil, Gauri (gas and oil), Ambe (gas and oil) and Parvati (oil). The Lakshmi gas has already been put to production and the company is selling 2.1 million standard cubic meters per day to Gujarat Powergen Energy Corporation (GPEC) and 1.3 mmscmd to Gujarat Gas Company Ltd (GGCL).
Source: IANS
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