Oman Oil Co (OOC) is in talks with the Tata Group to jointly set up industrial salt and soda ash plants in Oman even as it explores options of raising its stake in BPCL's Bina refinery project in Madhya Pradesh.The company's subsidiary Takamul is talking with Tata to "set up a plant to produce industrial salt and also one for soda ash," Ahmed Al-Wahaibi, chief executive officer, OOC, said.The company which has invested Rs 75 crore as equity in Bharat Oman Refineries Ltd is now looking at raising stake in it. "Things have changed and we are very seriously looking at our project with BPCL. We are actively considering increasing our stake."Bharat Oman Refineries is joint venture between Bharat Petroleum Corp and OOC for setting up the refinery at a cost of Rs 10,300 crore by 2010."Right now, Bina refinery is a 50:50 joint venture between BPCL and OOC. Both of us contributed Rs 75 crore initial equity each. BPCL has further chipped in with Rs 900 crore as preferential convertible shares and if OOC doesn't invest more, its stake in the company upon full equity infusion of Rs 2,000-4,000 crore would be 2 per cent," Ashok Sinha, CMD, BPCL said.Al-Wahaibi said the company has also had some talks with Reliance Industries for cooperation in energy and petrochemical ventures but "there is no specific project."He said OOC has a joint venture with Indian Farmers Fertilisers (IFFCO) and Krishak Bharati Co-operative Ltd (KRIBHCO) to produce 1.6 million tons of urea and 250,000 tons of ammonia annually and the company is looking at raising capacity of the plant. The Oman-based unit ships its entire produce to India.
