PANAJI: The oil and gas giant ONGC will shortly issue expressions of interest soon seeking interested parties to pick up its stake in its fully-owned subsidiary ONGC Petro additions (OPaL).
While ONGC owns 95.5% in the country’s the largest E&P company in the country, OPaL is also ONGC’s largest greenfield investment, rest of the stakes are with Gail India (4.19%) and Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (0.12%).
“OPaL has become our subsidiary, and we have been mandated to dilute our stake in it by 2030 and bring it back to a JV structure through a global tender, including a domestic partner. We hope to come out with an expression of interest calling interested parties shortly, though we have time till 2030, which is the asset monetisation deadline set by the government,” Arunangshu Sarkar, director—strategy & corporate affairs, ONGC, told a select group of reporters at the ongoing India Energy Week here Thursday.
When asked if the company failed to find a partner, could the stake dilution be done through taking the company, is into petrochemicals, public, Sarkar said it could done that way as well but did not elaborate.
He also ruled out any immediate expansion of Opal with has a capacity of 1.9 million tonne now at its Dahej facility.
On the impact of the Qatari ban on exports of ethane from 2028, which it uses as main feedstock, he said to secure regular supply, the company has decided to make our own arrangements for ethane sourcing including owning very large ethane carriers for which we have entered into a joint venture with Samsung on Tuesday for making two ships.
These ships will be ready well before the 2028 deadline, he said adding our ethane requirement is around 600 kilo tonne per annum. Each carrier will have a capacity of 50 kt, making about 12 trips per carrier annually. The vessels will be built in Korea and will be delivered in time to match the 2028 transition when Qatar stops supplying rich gas.
The project will be financed through a mix of equity and loans, and the overall cost will not be very high.
Qatar has been supplying ONGC rich gas through LNG—primarily methane, along with ethane, propane, butane, and heavier components. This allowed us to extract ethane from LNG. However, from 2028 onwards, Qatar will supply only lean gas or pure methane. This is because they plan to use ethane domestically for their own petrochemical plants. In fact, ethane exports from the Middle East are now almost entirely stopped.
The Dahej facility was kicked off in March 2017 and since then OPaL’s product portfolio offer solutions across essential and ‘aspirational’ applications ranging from plastics, packaging, rubber, yarns, fabrics, agriculture, automobiles, food industry, and more and has become one of the top-tier producers of quality petrochemical products.
OPaL’s produces 14 lakh tonne of polymers and 5 lakh tons of chemicals – 1,100 kt ethylene, 400 kt propylene and the associated units consist of pyrolysis gasoline hydrogenation unit, butadiene extraction unit and benzene extraction unit.