Kuwait Petroleum Corporation wants stake in Indian Oil Corporation
New Delhi, Sept. 27: Kuwait Petroleum Corporation is keen to pick up a stake in Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) if the government decides to divest a part of its holding to a strategic investor.
“The government is divesting some of its shares, may be offering a certain percentage to a strategic investor. We are interested in such a proposal, subject to feasibility studies and economics of the offer,” Kuwait’s oil minister Sheikh Ahmad al-Abdullah al-Sabah said after a meeting with the IOC management here today. Indian Oil plans to issue fresh shares amounting to 10 per cent of its equity through a follow-on offer. The government, which owns 78.92 per cent in the PSU, will separately sell 10 per cent of its stake. Al-Sabah insisted that the possibility of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation — of which he is the chairman — or the Kuwait Investment Authority buying into IOC arose only if the government agreed to give them a strategic stake. He said Kuwait had discussed with IOC the possibility of increasing long-term crude supplies to the company, which accounted for 28 per cent of the country’s refining capacity of 3.76 million barrels a day.
Kuwait supplies nine million tonnes of crude per year to IOC, chairman B.M. Bansal said. The company’s requirement will rise after it commissions the 300,000-barrel-a-day refinery and petrochemical complex at Paradip in Orissa in 2011-12. The visiting minister discussed Kuwait Petroleum Corporation’s participation in the Rs 29,777-crore project. Besides discussing long-term contracts for crude to India, al-Sabah deliberated on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) using the crude storage facilities being built in Mangalore and Visakhapatnam. He said Kuwait was worried about Opec members actually complying with their production quotas and would discuss the matter at the group’s meeting in Vienna on October 14. The 12-member cartel is unlikely to change production quotas as current oil prices are “comfortable”, he said.
Kuwait keen on IOC stake….by….The Telegraph………
