Reliance Industries (RIL) plans to invest about $27 billion in next four years across its core oil and gas and petrochemical businesses as also new ventures like telecom.
According to a Deutsche Bank AG report issued after its analysts met one of the company’s two joint chief financial officers (CFOs), “RIL is at the cusp of its next capex cycle as it invests $27 billion over 2013-14 to 2016-17 fiscal.”
About 85 per cent of the capex will be in its core business, the report said.
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RIL will spend $11 billion in oil and gas exploration including U.S. shale gas venture and $4 billion in refining business.
Another $8 billion is planned in petrochemical projects while $3 billion would go into its yet to be launched telecom venture. The rest $1 billion would go into retail business, it said.
RIL Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani had last year announced plans to invest Rs. 100,000 crore across energy, retail and telecom businesses in the next five years to double operating profit.
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It is in the process of getting regulatory nod for putting to production newer and satellite gas fields to arrest the decline in output from the main fields on the KG-D6 block.
RIL is investing $8 billion, the most since it completed a second oil refinery in 2008, in expansion of its petrochemical business to meet rising demand of plastics and polyester.
Also, it is setting up a $4 billion petroleum coke gasification project that will produce synthetic natural gas that will replace expensive LNG as fuel.
“After our detailed meeting with the Joint CFO of RIL, we came out more convinced on our bullish view on RIL,” the report said.
“Our positive view on RIL is premised on expectation of approval for gas price increase in FY14, approvals for KGD6 R-Series and NEC-25 development plans in FY14 improving visibility on monetisation of these discoveries, and start of a new capex cycle,” it said.
The most significant catalyst improving visibility on monetisation of existing discoveries will be approval for a hike in the domestic natural gas price. The company currently get USD 4.2 per million British thermal unit price of gas produced from KG-D6 block.
“The company has submitted a development plan for KG-D6 R-Series and will soon submit the same for (the separate) NEC-25 (block),” it said. “Coupled with the approved KG-D6 Satellite fields, RIL is targeting development of over 4 Trillion cubic feet of recoverable resources.”
RIL management believes there is further scope for faster approvals so as to increase domestic production.