$400mln Investment

Now if you wish to sell petrol and diesel in India you have to invest $400 million over a period of 10 years in setting up oil infrastructure projects. At the same time money spent on acquisition of companies won’t be qualified for grant of authorization to retail petrol and diesel.Indian government has already granted marketing rights to private sector Reliance Industries and Essar Oil in addition to state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Numaligarh Refinery (NRL).These companies have been allowed to set up 8,659 retail outlets. This marks a 40 per cent increase over the existing retail outlet strength of 18,848 operated by the existing four state oil marketing companies. As the demand for petroleum products is increasing 5 per cent annually the government of India wish to explore oil and gas through the newly formulated New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP).Fourty-seven exploration blocks were awarded since 2000 under the policy and bids for another 23 blocks were received.India currently imports 70 per cent of its 100 million tonnes crude oil requirement and to secure foreign supply India puts efforts on acquiring equity oil abroad.ONGC Videsh has acquired 20 per cent stake in Sakhlain-I, which will give India four to six million tonnes of oil from 2005. Also 25 per cent stake was acquired in the Greater Nile Oil Project in Oman.

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&to=http://www.ongcindia.com/' target=_blank>ONGC

&to=http://petroleum.nic.in/nrl.htm' target=_blank>NRL