India to Sell Refinery Stake to ONGC

India’s cabinet has approved a plan to sell its entire 51.1% stake in the third-largest local refiner Hindustan Petroleum Corp to the country’s biggest explorer, state-held Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, and aims to finalize the deal by the end of the current Indian financial year through March 2018, Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said, Oilprice.com reported. In early February this year, India’s Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs Arun Jaitley said while presenting the 2017-18 budget in parliament that the country was planning to create an integrated public-sector oil major to match the performance of huge international private sector oil and gas companies. Speaking to ET Now on Monday, the minister said that it was too early to speculate on a price of the deal. The stake sale is reportedly valued at around $4.6 billion. According to Pradhan, there will be significant synergies and enhanced capacity from the sale of HPCL stake to ONGC, and HPCL can maintain its brand identity post-stake sale to ONGC.