Page 6 - AsianOil Week 36

AsianOil SOUTH ASIA AsianOil

RIL plans O2C spin-off

FINANCE & INDIAN conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd [coronavirus] COVID-19 situation” meant the
INVESTMENT (RIL) has revealed details of its plan to spin off deal was no longer on track to meet the “original
its oil-to-chemicals (O2C) assets, ahead of a timeline”.
planned stake sale. Reuters quoted unnamed sources at the time
The company said in a regulatory filing on as saying the two sides had failed to agree on a
September 6 that it would transfer its refining, price for the stake, with Aramco understood to
petrochemicals, fuel retail and wholesale mar- be pushing for a price review.
keting interests to a new unit in order to attract Aramco’s CEO Amin Nasser told reporters in
potential investors. It noted: “RIL has been August that his company was still interested in
exploring various opportunities to bring in stra- the stake and that it was in talks with RIL.
tegic and other investors in the O2C business. “We are still in discussions with Reliance.
Investors have expressed interest [in making] an The work is still on. We will update our share-
investment in the O2C business.” holders in due course about the Reliance deal,”
RIL said the spin-off was necessary, as its own Nasser said. His comments came after that oil
listing made it impossible to issues shares solely giant revealed that its first-half profit had more
linked to the O2C business. than halved to $23.2bn from $46.9bn in the same
The group had originally approved the trans- period of 2019.™
fer of its downstream and midstream to Reli-
ance O2C in April as part of the Indian major’s
planned sale to sell a 20% interest in these inter-
ests to Saudi Aramco. However, RIL revealed in
July that the deal had been delayed by the global
economic downturn.
RIL, which operates the world’s largest down-
stream complex in Jamnagar in Gujarat State,
announced in August 2019 that state-owned
Aramco had agreed to invest in its refining, pet-
rochemicals and fuels marketing businesses. The
Middle Eastern oil giant was expected to pay
$15bn for the stake.
But RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani told
shareholders on July 15 that “unforeseen cir-
cumstances in the energy market and the

SOUTHEAST ASIA

SapuraOMV ramps up output

from gas field offshore Malaysia

PROJECTS & SAPURAOMV Upstream has “stabilised” Exploration & Production, owns a 40% stake in
COMPANIES production from the Bakong natural gas field SK408. Shell and state-owned Petronas Carigali
offshore Malaysia, after bringing the asset on also each hold 30% in the licence.
stream in June. The SK408 partners have signed a long-
SapuraOMV said on September 3 that the term gas supply agreement with state-owned
ramp-up in production, which had been deliv- Petronas, which will see production from
ered within budget, meant that the first phase of the PSC supply the state-owned major’s Bin-
the SK408 production-sharing contract’s (PSC) tulu liquefied natural gas (LNG) complex in
development had been successfully completed. Sarawak State.
The first phase of the PSC’s development also SapuraOMV said the full ramp-up of SK408’s
included the Larak and Gorek gas fields, with first phase is set to double the company’s produc-
SapuraOMV having started production from tion to more than 30,000 barrels of oil equivalent
the former in December 2019 and Royal Dutch per day (boepd) this year from last year.
Shell having brought the latter on stream in May. SapuraOMV chairman Shahril Sham-
SapuraOMV, which is a joint venture between sudin said: “This achievement further
Malaysia’s Sapura Energy and Austria’s OMV strengthens our presence in the existing

P6 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 36 10•September•2020