Financial Times

Indian petroleum firm eyes Sri Lankan offshore drilling
Reliance Industries Ltd, a Fortune Global 500 company, among the fastest growing private sector companies in India, last week announced plans to enter into oil exploration activities in Sri Lanka and discussed the details of the tender process with the Ministry of Petroleum officials.

“They want to bid for one ‘bed’, either in the Caveri basin or the Mannar basin and will explore it for oil. If they are successful in the bidding process, they will engage in the exploration activities in collaboration with the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC),” a CPC official said. Reliance Industries’ Head of International Operations Atul Chandra and the Vice President of the company's International Business Development, Sailesh Mukherjee had met with the Ministry officials to discuss about the memorandum of understanding on the bidding process.

The Ministry of Petroleum is preparing to form a crude oil company dealing in ‘upstream oil businesses,’ which will carry out digging, exploration and processing of crude oil, in addition to working on attracting more bidders for oil exploration.

“Several western countries have expressed interest, but Reliance is the first to express interest in all possible areas of investment in the petroleum sector in Sri Lanka -- from oil exploration to petroleum products retailing,” the official said.

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