Shell and Reliance enter last
lap for HPCL stake

The government has shortlisted buyers for a 34.1% stake in Hindustan Petroleum. Reliance and Essar are well known Indian groups.

The others, however, range from well-known global giants to unlisted government companies. Saudi Aramco (SA), Kuwait Petroleum (KPC) and Petronas of Malaysia are government-owned companies that control the oil industry of their countries. Aramco and KPC control 25% and 9% of the world’s oil reserves respectively while Shell and BP are counted amongst the world’s largest corporations. One factor common to these companies is that they are present in all parts of the oil business, starting from exploration, production, refining and retail of petro-products.

SA is Saudi Arabia’s national oil company. In the year ’02, it pumped about 340m tonnes of oil, about 10% of the world crude production. Aramco has the capacity to pump out as much as 500m tonnes per annum (MTPA) of crude. It has refining capacity of 70 MTPA, holds about a quarter of world’s known oil reserves and runs a fleet of 25 tankers and product carriers.

What Aramco is to Saudi Arabia, KPC is for Kuwait, though on a slightly reduced scale. Its oil production is roughly 100 MTPA. KPC has total revenues exceeding $28bn. It operates through a number of wholly owned subsidiaries that operate more than 5,000 retail outlets (in Europe), a fleet of 31 tankers and three refineries with a total capacity of 45 MTPA. Shell is the largest privately owned oil and gas producer in the world with annual revenues of $235.6bn. It has operations in 145 countries across the World and employs 115,000 people. Shell produces about 118 MTPA of crude and has an interest in almost 50 refineries around the world. Its products are sold through more than 55,000 service stations, making it the world’s largest retail network for petro products.

BP has revenues of $179bn and employs about 115,000 people. Its crude production is about 100 MTPA. Its total reserves are about 17bn barrels, half of it oil and the remainder natural gas. BP has a stake in 24 refineries worldwide where its share is about 175 MTPA. BP is also a large retail player, with about 30,000 service stations, half of them in the US.

Petronas is the smallest of the lot. It had total revenues of $21.43bn and a net income of $3.98bn in FY03. Refining accounts for about 40% of the business. Oil & gas and LNG account for about 20% each of the revenues. Petrochemicals and logistics account for the remainder. Total reserves held by Petronas are about 1bn tonnes. Petronas owns two refineries in Malaysia and one in South Africa with total throughput of 21 MTPA. HPCL, the firm all of them are vying for, had consolidated revenues of $10.3bn and net profit of $317m in FY03. It is a major player in the upstream business in India, with a refining capacity of 13 MTPA and a retail network consisting of almost 5,000 petrol pumps.

AMIT BHANDARI / ETIG
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 06, 2003 01:23:43 AM ]