Oil ministry is expected to approve Cairn India's proposal to start pumping crude oil from the Bhagyam field

12 Sep 2011 Evaluate

The oil ministry is expected to soon approve Cairn India's proposal to start pumping crude oil from the Bhagyam field that would ramp up the Rajasthan block's output by a third, to 165,000 barrel perday.Cairn had announced it would start crude oil production from the field this year, but the approval was delayed because of the company's dispute with partner ONGC over royalty and concerns about negative observations in the draft report of the CAG. CAG objections were not sound on technical grounds. Cairn's discoveries are as per the production sharing contract.


The discovery is legitimate and it is also part of an already approved field development plan, hence there is no need to review it. An oil ministry official confirmed that the government's approval could be expected this month. The approvals were also delayed because state-run ONGC, a 30% partner of Cairn in the block, did not want to raise output from the Rajasthan fields without resolving the royalty issue as an increased production would soar its royalty burden. ONGC accepts its royalty obligation according to a 15-year-old contract but cites the same contract that says the levy is cost recoverable. In other words, royalty is treated as expenditure before calculating profits of partners, making the stakeholders share the burden in the same proportion as their equity holding.

Peers
Company Name CMP
ONGC 245.45
Oil India 507.20
Jindal Drilling&Inds 744.70
Hind Oil Exploration 187.30
Deep Industries 504.55
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