Essar Oil Ltd has decided to foray into petro-products retailing and initiated a process to open 1,700 direct retail outlets across the country over the next 3-4 years. This follows the government's plans to deregulate the oil sector as scheduled and dismantle the administered price mechanism (APM) by April 2002.
Disclosing this at the twelfth annual general meeting, chairman Shashi Ruia said that Essar would soon be ready with the supply and distribution model, comprehensive retail marketing plan including brand strategy and efficient marketing organisation to leverage this opportunity.
The company has been pre-qualified for bidding in the privatisation proposal of IBP, a public sector marketing company. If this materialises, Essar Oil would have a strong competitive edge to market the products of IBP, Ruia said.
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Revealing that the 10.5 MMTPA refinery project has achieved full financial closure, the chairman said that Essar Oil was at an advanced stage of complying with certain pre-disbursement conditions stipulated by the financial institutions and banks, after which the work at the refinery site will resume.
The implementation of the refinery is 63 per cent complete and the amount invested on the same as on June 30, 2001 stood at Rs 6,300 crore. The refinery is expected to be commissioned within 18 to 24 months of restarting the project work, he said.
On the exploration and production front, Essar Oil has completed drilling its first exploratory well in the Rajasthan onshore block, RJ-IB-90/5, which it commenced drilling in February 2001. Plans are afoot to drill another well in close proximity to the first well to fully establish the potential of this block.