Unable to find a suitable partner for manufacturing (deep sea) offshore oil rigs due to huge investment requirement, state-run BHEL has decided to shelve the plans altogether.
"We are abandoning offshore business, we tried our best to have a collaboration but we could not get one as the investments were heavy and we had to construct them (rigs) in West Asia," CMD BHEL K Ravi Kumar told PTI in an interview.
However, the company is continuing its onshore oil rigs business and is planning to expanding it further.
"We are doing onshore rigs with ONGC and Oil India (OIL), we want to change from DC (direct current) drive to AC (alternating current) drive," Kumar added.
In 2004, BHEL signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with state-owned OIL for the refurbishment and upgradation of their land rigs.
BHEL, since the first order for oil rigs in 1977, has manufactured and supplied over 80 drilling and well servicing rigs to both ONGC and OIL.
The company's primary business is manufacturing power equipment and it plans to augment its manufacturing capacity for supporting 15,000 MW electricity generation by the end of this financial year.
