India Eying Own Giant Oil Co.

India plans to form a giant national oil company by combining other state-owned firms, finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Wednesday, as New Delhi wants to expand its foreign presence to meet growing domestic fuel demand. India, struggling to lift its local oil production, imports about 80% of its oil needs. Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015 set the goal of cutting this import dependence to 67% by 2020, Reuters reported. "We propose to create an integrated public sector oil major which will be able to match the performance of international and domestic private sector oil and gas companies," Jaitley said in his budget speech. India has about a dozen state-run oil and gas companies—including Indian Oil Corp, Oil and Natural Gas Corp , Hindustan Petroleum Corp and others—but alone they do not have the financial power to rival global oil majors in bids for overseas exploration and production assets.