RIL hives off foreign oil, gas biz to Dubai firm

Reliance Industries has hived-off its overseas oil and gas projects into a separate wholly-owned company based in Dubai - titled Reliance Exploration and Production DMCC - and is eyeing a tie-up with ONGC Videsh (OVL) to jointly bid for oil and gas opportunities abroad.

The Dubai-based company has been formed with Mukesh Ambani as its chairman, industry sources said.

The company's interest in a discovered oil block in Yemen and in an offshore exploration block in Oman, besides exploration projects in northern Iraq, East Timor and Columbia will be transfered to the new company.

The Dubai-based firm has been modelled on lines of ONGC Videsh, which is a fully-owned overseas investment subsidiary of state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC).

"Reliance has realised that it needs to delink assets in politically risk-prone areas from its balance sheet. Besides, it also makes business sense because every time they brought home seismic data of any overseas assets for processing, they paid 12% customs duty," a source said.

The source said, "It is keen on bidding together for major opportunities with OVL. OVL, which has presence in 15 countries and has well-known tie-ups like the one with Mittal Steel for overseas oil asset acquisitions, has earned itself a reputation as a serious player. Reliance is a conservative player and would rather like to share risks with OVL." No Reliance spokesperson was immediately available for comment.

The company is looking at opportunities in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.