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BG confident it will close Enron India deal

British gas and oil company BG Group Plc said on Friday it was confident it would become operator of three oil and gas fields offshore India despite mounting complications.

Earlier this week India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation rejected BG's plan to acquire a 30 percent stake in the fields from collapsing US energy firm Enron, saying it still wanted operatorship itself.

BG has agreed to pay $388-million for Enron's stake but has made completion conditional on it getting operatorship -- which gives it control over day-to-day management.

ONGC said BG had not been "sufficiently responsive" for it to become the operator of the fields. ONGC said previously that it wanted operatorship itself.

On Friday a BG spokesman said, "We continue to negotiate with ONGC and other parties and we are confident we will reach a resolution".

The spokesman added that Enron's financial crisis would not affect its plans. "We are working hard to complete the deal and Enron's position doesn't change that," he said.

According to industry sources, BG may offer a one-off financial inducement to ONGC to complete the deal. BG declined to comment on this.

The Panna, Mukta and Tapti fields, considered one of India's prized discoveries in the last two decades, are jointly owned by ONGC, Enron Oil and Gas India Ltd, and Reliance Industries Ltd, the country's biggest petrochemicals firm.

The Panna-Mukta oilfields have recoverable reserves of 184 million barrels of oil and oil equivalent in gas and the Tapti gas field has reserves of 96.3 billion cubic metres of gas.

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