Ril to invest $4bn in hydrocarbons

Reliance has marketable securities including investments in Reliance Petroleum Ltd which at current market prices are valued at approximately Rs 1,10,000 crores ($28 billion). "This gives Reliance the ability to pursue organic and inorganic growth opportunities of significant scale and size in the future," said RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani. He was addressing shareholders at the 33rd annual general meeting of the company in Mumbai on Friday.
The company he said would follow "an acquisition-led strategy in this era of globalisation. This strategy is already in place with recent acquisitions in Malaysia and Africa." Mr Ambani said that Reliance will invest $4 billion of risk capital in the coming years, over and above the $2 billion already invested, to realise the hydrocarbon potential of India.
He said the first gas discoveries in Krishna Godavari are expected to start production in the second half of the financial year 2008-09. The gas production rate will be equivalent to about half a million barrels of crude oil per day, representing 30 per cent of India’s current oil imports. At current prices of gas and crude oil, this means a savings of Rs 36,000 crores annually, with a multiplier effect on the Indian economy. Reliance is targeting 10 billion barrels of oil reserves globally. It is also expanding its oil and gas portfolio outside India. The oil and gas upstream footprint of Reliance now spans the globe from Oman, Yemen, Colombia, East Timor, Northern Iraq and Australia, he said.
Mr Ambani said that RIL would expand its paraxylene capacity from 1.9 million tonnes to 4.5 million tonnes per year which will give RIL 15 per cent of the global paraxylene capacity.