REL N ONGC

ONGC snubs Goldman with facts on overseas growthState-owned giant Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC (ONGC.NS : 682.55 +16.15)) has said that it has acquired 43 overseas oil and gas assets in the last six years, countering with hard facts questions raised by investment analysts at Goldman Sachs over the strength of its international operations.


"From just one property in 2003, ONGC's overseas oil and gas properties have grown to 44 in 2009," ONGC said in a statement released on Sunday in response to criticism by the nvestment bank that ONGC's overseas growth strategy "has not been effective."The company said it has added 255 million tonne oil equivalent (MTOE) of reserves through acquisition of overseas properties since 2003-04.


GS had also raised corporate governance issues in ONGC's working. GS says the government, as promoter of ONGC, had taken $20 billion in cash from the company over last six years without consulting minority shareholders.ommenting on corporate governance issues raised by GS, ONGC's statement said, "Subsidy discounts to public sector oil marketing companies is a ractice of the government since 2003-04."


"Moreover, these discounts are applicable to crude produced from blocks awarded to ONGC by the government on nomination basis. The government is the actual owner of these blocks," it said.Incidentally, this is not for the first time that the US investment bank has had a run-in with the state-owned firm.In 2005, the then Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar had accused Goldman of "lack of propriety and transparency" in presiding over the auction of a Kazakhstan oil firm.


Aiyar had alleged that ONGC and its billionaire partner Lakshmi N Mittal's $3.98 billion bid was the highest when the bids for PetroKazakhstan closed on August 19, 2005. But Goldman allowed China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) to revise its bid to $4.18 billion in the following days and the sale was announced before office hours on August 22.
Goldman did not allow ONGC-Mittal to revise its bid for PetroKazakhstan, he had alleged then.Reliance resumes oil output from east coastNEW DELHI (Reuters) - Reliance Industries Ltd (RELIANCE.NS : 1202 +48.65) resumed crude oil production from its east coast MA-1 field on March 8 following an emergency shutdown in December, Upstream Regulator V.K. Sibal said on Thursday.
"They have informed us that crude oil production has began from March 8. They have connected the third well also, so in next two days it will be about 20,000 bpd," Sibal told Reuters.
Reliance had stopped oil production from its Krishna Godavari block in December after an emergency shutdown of its floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) system.
Reliance began producing oil from the block in mid-September and was producing about 10,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil from two wells before the shutdown.
Reliance owns 90 percent of the D-6 block, while Canada's Niko Resources has the rest.
The Indian firm sold the first 450,000 bpd cargo from the block to Hindustan Petroleum Corp's Vizag refinery at a discount of $5.34 a barrel to Nigerian grade Bonny Light.