Nigeria's new government is reviewing award of oil blocks in last couple of years after it received complaints of irregularities in their allotments, with some quarters expressing apprehensions that the licences won by India's ONGC-Mittal combine may also be under scanner.Although the identities of the blocks as well as the awardees are not immediately known, industry sources said some domestic and foreign entities that obtained licences through 'backdoor' may lose it.
Iran said it will not set any deadline for India to join the gas pipeline that also includes Pakistan and hoped New Delhi will not buckle under US pressure to dump the multi-billion dollar project for a rival pipeline from Turkmenistan. "We have not set any deadline (for India to join the IPI pipeline project)," Iranian Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari said on Thursday.
Iraq threatened on Thursday to blacklist Reliance Industries Limited from future oil contracts after the company struck a deal with the Kurdish Regional government for two blocks without Baghdad's approval. Reliance Industries Limited had last week signed the contract for the blocks Rovi and Sarta in northern Iraq with the autonomous Kurdish Regional Government. The blocks, measuring 517 and 607 sq km respectively, have almost 80 per cent oil bearing structure.
With crude oil flirting with the $100 a barrel mark, world's largest oil producer Saudi Arabia is emulating marketing savvy West to showcase oil cartel Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries in a new light when it organises the third OPEC Summit in Riyadh this week.
LN Mittal is getting a senior bureaucrat from the ministry of petroleum and natural gas to run his first-ever venture in the refining business, the Rs 18,919 crore (Rs 189.19 billion) Bhatinda refinery.
India-born billionaire Lakshmi N Mittal may take 49 per cent stake in Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd's under-construction $3 billion refinery at Bhatinda in Punjab.