Domestic and overseas investments in oil&gas sector:

Domestic Investment:

• Saudi Arabian company Saudi Aramco is keen to pick up a 26 per cent stake in IOC's Paradeep refinery.
• Steel magnate L N Mittal picked up a stake in  Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) the 9 million tonne per annum upcoming refinery in Bathinda.
• HPCL is also likely to offer 50 per cent stake in a new 9 million tonne refinery in Vishakapatnam to French company Total.
• Total will pick up the stake in collaboration with Kuwait Petroleum, which was earlier offered equity participation in IOC's Paradeep refinery and the naphtha cracker plant in Panipat.
• The Scotland-based Cairn Energy PLC first arrived in the Indian subcontinent in 1994. It now has 12 oil and gas discoveries in Rajasthan to its credit. The company has invested around US$ 2 billion in the last ten years. Cairn generates more than 60 per cent of its revenue from oil and gas fields in India and the percentage is likely to go up when fields in the Rajasthan block are commissioned.

Overseas Investments
To meet its spiralling demand, India is investing heavily in oil fields abroad. India's state-owned oil firms already have stakes in oil and gas fields in Russia, Sudan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Qatar, Ivory Coast, Australia, Vietnam and Myanmar.

• Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has signed agreements with ENI to take 20-25 per cent stake in a Congo oil block and in return give the Italian firm 30-35 per cent stake in its Mahanadi basin block.
• Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd has signed a farm-in agreement for acquiring 20 per cent participating interest in an Australian block AC/P32 in the Timor Sea area.
• Reliance Industries (RIL) is set to invest in a refinery in Yemen with an initial capacity to process over 50,000 barrels of crude per day.
• India has 20 per cent participation in Russia's Sakhalin I and has 20 per cent participatory interest in that country's national company, Rosneft.