Oil giants compete for Bengal find
Three of the world’s biggest oil companies – BP, Chevron and ExxonMobil – are fighting it out for a new natural gas find in India’s Bay of Bengal, according to news agency reports late last night.
British oil giant BP and America’s Chevron and ExxonMobil are said to be talks with India’s largest private sector exploration company Reliance Industries. The giant natural gas field has been discovered in the Krishna Godavari basin.
BP’s boss Lord Browne flew to India last week to finalise an deal with Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani to build a US$3bn (£1.7bn) refinery in Punjab, but also began talks on the Bay of Bengal field.
However, say wire service reports, Reliance is keeping its options open, particularly given interest from other parties.
The Indian company already has one overseas partner in the field – Canadian explorer Niko resources owns a 10 per cent stake. Reliance was forced to team up with a partner when the lot was originally auctioned by the Indian government because the exploration company lacked the requisite deep water exploration experience.
The field is particularly attractive because it is so close to India, one of the world’s two fastest growing energy consumers. BP is said to be extremely keep to get its hand on the gas field.
However, there are still some hurdles – there is no pipeline in place to carry the gas and the field is not scheduled to start pumping oil until 2008.