(TH)
Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), India’s second largest state-owned oil marketer is mulling a merger with GAIL (India), India’s largest gas distributor, and Oil India, the country’s second largest explorer, to create an integrated energy giant after the Centre approved the merger of rival Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd. (HPCL) with ONGC.
BPCL, which got Maharatna status on Tuesday, has written to the petroleum ministry about its ambitious plan and is waiting to hear back from the government. Confirming the development, BPCL Chairman D. Rajkumar said, “BPCL has also got aspirations and ambitions to get into some kind of integration. This integration will be planned in such a manner that will fulfil our ambition to be among the top 25 energy companies in the world. There are a number of options being evaluated but it’s very difficult for me to share with you as it needs to be approved by the government as we are going to buy the stakes from the government.”
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had set the ball rolling on the merger of state owned oil firms in his 2017 budget speech when he seplt out the government’s intent to create integrated public sector ‘oil majors’ to match the performance of global oil firms and domestic private sector firms.
