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| Sunday, 26 February 2006 |
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Top RIL delegation here to evaluate oil prospects by Elmo Leonard
India's largest and fastest growing conglomerate, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) had a delegation here, last week, to evaluate opportunities in oil exploration. Where others had failed, RIL, India's only Fortune 500 list company, had succeeded, using more advanced technology, its president, Atul Chandra told the media. Answering questions, Chandra favoured deep sea exploration for oil and gas for Sri Lanka. But, BOI chairman, Lakshman Watawala said that government will call worldwide tenders for oil exploration. Sri Lanka is intent in furthering trade links with India, following the Free Trade Agreement between the two nations. The zero duty structures of reciprocity will be further increased, and trade opportunities diversified, Watawala said. RIL, is the largest and one of the fastest growing private sector companies in India, with business activities encompassing all major growth sectors of the Indian economy such as oil and gas exploration and production, petroleum refining and marketing, petrochemicals including intermediates, and textiles, vice president, Sailesh Mukherjee said. The company manufactures and markets a wide range of products with market leadership in almost all its businesses. Reliance's refining activity is carried out at the Jamnagar refinery complex with a refining capacity of 27 million tonnes per annum (540,000 barrels per day). All RIL's production facilities have a common feature global scale operations, employing state-of-the-art technology in the respective fields. The Reliance group has also ventured into power, telecom and infocom areas, emerging as a well diversified conglomerate with global competence in technology, management and financial capabilities to meet the needs of the rapidly growing Indian market. With domestic market shares ranging from 40 to 80 percent, RIL is also ranked among the top 10 producers globally, for all its major products, Chandra said. Reliance is India's largest private sector company on all major financial parameters with a gross turnover of $17 billion, cash profit of $2.1 billion, net profit of $1.2 billion and total assets of $16.3 billion. Answering queries, Chandra said that oil exploration and petroleum were not the only areas, which he wished to explore, here. Reliance's high-powered business delegation had meetings scheduled with the Petroleum Resources Development Committee, Coast Conservation Department and Central Environment, Marine Pollution Authority and BOI. Watawala said that RIL was interested in the possibility of entering into Sri Lanka's oil refinery sector in collaboration with the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, being already involved with supplying CPC with crude oil and petroleum products. The company's main interest is to engage in upstream oil and petroleum exploration in Sri Lanka and also to assist the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and CPC by way of technology transfer and providing training in oil exploration and downstream development such as refining and petroleum products. RIL accounts for 17 percent of the total profits of the private sector in India; 7 percent of the profits of the entire corporate sector in India; 6 percent of the total market capitalisation in India., while one of every four investors in India is a Reliance shareholder, the media was told. |
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