 "Oil India to raise $500-mn loan to finance Rosneft deal")
The deal is likely to be finalised by the end of this quarter. A consortium by three state-run companies — Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), OIL and Bharat Petro Resources (BPRL) — will be paying nearly $4 billion to acquire stake in Taas-Yuryakh oil & gas fields and Vankor oil field in East Siberia.
For the remaining part of its share of $1 billion in the deal, Oil India may depend on its cash reserves of more than Rs 10,000 crore.
“We are in the final stages of striking the deal. It will happen by the end of this quarter. To finance the deal, we may first go for bridge loan and later may raise money through bonds to refinance this bridge loan,” said Utpal Bora, chairman and managing director of Oil India, while refusing to divulge further details. Later, an OIL India official confirmed the size of the bridge loan. While the Vankor oil field produces 400,000 barrels of oil per day, the production from Taas-Yuryakh asset is 20,000 barrels of oil per day, which is expected to touch 100,000 barrels of oil per day soon.
The Indian consortium will be taking around 30 per cent stake in Taas-Yuryakh field and 24 per cent stake in Vankor fields. The deal size could include acquisition cost and share of 10-year capital expenditure programme. Similarly, in 2014, OIL India raised $1 billion through its debut dollar bond sale programme, to repay the bridge loan it had taken to buy Videocon's 10 per cent stake in a Mozambique oil block in association with ONGC Videsh.
After the OIL, IOC, BPRL deal is finalised, Indian companies will together own 49.9 per cent stake Vankor field. Vankor has an estimated reserves are 520 million tonnes of oil and 95 billion cubic metres of natural gas. For initial talks regarding the deal, Rosneft’s chief executive Igor Sechin had visited India in March. Rosneft is an integrated oil company, head-quartered in Moscow, majority owned by the government of Russia.
