|
BP Plc is likely to enter into a
strategic tie-up with Cals Ltd, for its proposed one billion
dollar, oil refinery at Haldia near Kolkata, India.
BP Plc is in talks with Indian start-up CALS
Refineries Ltd to supply crude oil and buy petroleum products,
officials at the two firms said this week.
"There is a
discussion where we hope to sign a memorandum of understanding
quickly," Pia MacRae, BP's spokeswoman in India, told local news
agency. She said BP had no plans to purchase equity in the
refinery.
CALS
plans to dismantle a German refinery and set it up at Haldia in the
eastern state of West Bengal. The project is expected to start
operating in the first quarter of 2010 and will have a capacity to
process 100,000 barrels per day.
The refinery was acquired by
CALS last year from German firm Bayernoil's Ingolstadt facility, said
Arun Ramachandran, a president at CALS, adding the company would soon
sign an initial agreement with BP for sourcing crude.
BP
Integrated Supply and Trading, which is holding the talks, also has
agreements with other Indian refiners, including Reliance Industries,
MacRae said.
CALS has engaged London-based consultants KBC for dismantling the
refinery and re-constructing it in India, Ramachandran said. "The
refinery is currently operational and will be handed over to us by end
of June. We are spending $1 billion on the entire project," he
said. "We have reconfigured the refinery to use both Arab light
and Arab heavy crudes and plan to add a delayed coker to it," he said.
Ramachandran
said CALS had raised $200 million last year through an issue of global
depositary receipts and plans to raise another $100 million from a
strategic investor. "The rest $700 million would be raised in debt in Indian and overseas markets," he said.
He said last week CALS signed an agreement with the West Bengal government for acquiring land for the refinery.
Cals Refineries' has employed the
former IOC chairman M S Ramachandran as the chairman of the board. Some senior
managers from RPL and Essar have also joined the company in the run-up to the
implementation of the project, the release said
PetrolWorld 260308 ($1 = 40.1 rupees)
|
