The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) is looking to expand its presence in India through strategic petroleum reserves said Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) Minister of State and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ADNOC.
Speaking to reporters at the sidelines of Petrotech 2019, he said, “India is very high on our strategic agenda and expanding our strategic reserve in India will be an item on the agenda to be discussed with our friends and counterparts in India.”
“We are looking at expanding investment portfolio in downstream sectors, refining and petrochemicals. We are only looking at strategic partnerships given that we can also bring our own crude. India is not only an important market for us, India is a very strategic partner. The UAE is expanding in all levels and all sectors and energy being one of it, we will continue to always look for ways to enhance our avenues of cooperation,” Al Jaber said.
In June last year, ADNOC and Saudi ARAMCO had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for participating in the Ratnagiri Refinery project in Maharashtra.
The project has been envisaged as the largest single location refinery and petrochemical complex in the world and is being implemented by Ratnagiri Refinery & Petrochemicals Limited (RRPCL).
The mega refinery will be capable of processing 1.2 million barrels of crude oil per day (60 million metric tonnes per annum) and the project cost is estimated at around Rs 3 lakh crore ($ 44 billion).
But this project has also run into land acquisition hurdles. Despite this, the RRPCL management is confident of achieving the 2025 deadline with hopes of commencing physical work in January 2020.
Commenting on the progress made on the project, Al Jaber said, “We are still at an early stage, we are still in the process of defining the scope and scale of the project. We are working very closely with our partners Saudi Aramco as well as our counterparts in India.”
On its part, the dealer will have to do the needful to seek all the permissions required to setup a CNG Station including change of land use, necessary clearance, license, etc at the dealer's own expense. The day to day operation of the equipment as well as of CNG retail outlet including dispensing of gas and general maintenance shall be the responsibility of the appointed dealer. The dealer shall be paid commission by the concerned CGD entity as per the sales achieved based on the fixed dealer commission, an Indraprastha Gas Limited statement said