India's business environment has improved in a few years, BP's CEO Bob Dudley said today as the Britain-based oil giant is planning massive investments in India in partnership with Reliance.
"Yes. It has improved," Dudley told PTI while responding to a question if the business environment in India has improved, on the sidelines of the ongoing CERAWeek 2017 being attended by top global and corporate leaders from across the world.
"I had a good meeting with the Minister (Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan). He is very clear that the new pricing model would affect new investment. This is important for us. He was very reassuring about these things and they are important given the size of investment we may make or may consider," Dudley said.
However, he refrained from giving any answer on the size of investment in India and said, "We have to sit down and discuss with our partners Reliance on that. We got the R-series fields and then later on deeper fields in D6".
Earlier, during the plenary opening oil dialogue, Dudley was optimistic about India's energy market and its growth story. He met Pradhan on the sidelines of this major international meeting on oil and gas.
"We had a good meeting with the Indian Minister. And a lot of the Indian industry is here. India has a lot of natural gas in the east coast. It has a big pipeline that goes to various parts of the country. It is behind in developing its resources. It has taken a while to have natural gas price that justifies projects.
"Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) and Minister (Pradhan) last year made a big effort... In turning the tide in recognising market prices. I think just based on getting a few more assurances, projects in India will be competitive," Dudley said, adding that there might be announcements on investments in India later this year.
Pradhan later said that marketing and pricing freedom are the biggest reform which has made India an attractive destination for investment.
"The biggest reform we could organise in our market is giving marketing and pricing freedom. For any investor, this is one of the biggest assurances for their investments. BP is one of our precious investors in our market. Our policy reform assures them," Pradhan said.
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