OVL buys 30% of Namibian oil block from UK's Tullow

OVL did not disclose the deal value. Tullow Oil held 65 per cent interest in the Namibian Petroleum Exploration License (PEL) 37, covering three blocks.

Pancontinental Namibia (Pty) Ltd holds 30 per cent interest and the remaining 5 per cent is with Paragon Oil and Gas.

OVL said it has "signed definitive binding agreements with Tullow Namibia Ltd (Tullow), a wholly owned subsidiary of Tullow Oil plc, on June 28, 2017 for acquiring 30 per cent participating interest in Namibia PEL 37 for Blocks 2112A, 2012B and 2113B out of Tullow's existing participating interest of 65 per cent in the license".

Tullow will continue to remain operator after the acquisition, which is subject to satisfaction of customary conditions precedents including approvals of Namibian regulatory authorities and joint venture partners, the company said in a statement.

"The completion of the present transaction would mark OVL's entry in Namibian offshore and is consistent with its strategic objective of adding high impact exploration and production assets to its existing exploration and production portfolio," it said.

PEL 37 covers three adjacent blocks over 17,000 sq km in the central Walvis Basin offshore Namibia. To date, four large prospects and three large leads have been mapped in detail. They have potential for combined prospective resources of more than 900 million barrels of oil (recoverable).

OVL is India's largest international oil and gas exploration and production company. It has 38 projects in 17 countries including Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Kazakhstan, Mozambique, Myanmar, Russia, South Sudan, Sudan, Venezuela, Vietnam and New Zealand. It currently produces about 285,000 barrels of oil and oil equivalent gas per day and has total oil and gas reserves (2P) of about 704 million tons of oil equivalent as on April 1, 2017. pti

Coimbatore: Indian Oil Corporation on Monday launched 450-kg Indane Jumbo LPG cylinder in the Indian market.

Indane Jumbo called the "Mini-Bulk" is available in minimum footprint size with a flow rate of up to 2,000 kg/hour and does not require license to use.

Talking to reporters on the sidelines of the launch, Indian Oil Executive Director - Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, R Sitharthan said Coimbatore, being a very industrialised city, was the best place to introduce the product in India.

"With this launch we expect to meet the need of industries where space is a constraint and constant changeover is not possible." he said.

Despite its size, "Jumbo" is easy to handle and can be installed quickly, as ease of operation was one of the primary things that were kept in mind when it was conceptualized, apart from meeting the high flow rate requirement, he said. Being the most profitable PSU in India and ranked 161st in Fortune 500 Global List, with a revenue of 54.7 billion US Dollars, IOC is handling 11 out of 23 refineries in India and 12,848 kms of pipelines across the country, he said. Launched in 1970, Indane is delivered to the doorsteps of over 9.8 crore households and sales crossed 10 million metric tonnes (MMT) after registering 10 per cent year-on-year growth during 2016-17, he said.

Indane is now available in compact 5 kg cylinders for rural, hilly and inaccessible areas, 14.2 kg cylinders for domestic use, and 19 kg and 47.5 kg and 450 kg for commercial and industrial use, Sitharthan said.

With 91 bottling plants in upcountry locations with state-of-the-art safety features, two million cylinders are rolled out a day, making the company the second largest marketer of LPG hlobally, after SHV Gas of the Netherlands, he said.

The company has released an all-tie high 1.5 crore LPG connections (PMUY + non-PMUY) during 2016-17 against 1.03 crore during the last financial year, he said.

Sitharthan said that as of Monday, a total of 44,43,637 customers had joined the "give it up" campaign resulting into savings of Rs. 1,759.68 crores.