Anil Agarwal’s Cairn Oil & Gas is scouting for global partners to develop the 41 small and discovered blocks it won in the recent auction.

Vedanta chairman Anil Agarwal and Cairn chief executive Sudhir Mathur met the executives of 70 services companies this week in Houston to encourage the firms to set up consortia to compete for the contracts, a company release said.

Sudhir Mathur, CEO of Cairn Oil & Gas, said, “We are gearing up for a new, extended phase of growth with considerable investments in our brownfield as well as greenfield blocks. The best technology and expertise will be critical to fast-track this process and realise our vision to achieve energy security for India.”

The company won 41 of the 55 blocks auctioned under India’s first licensing round for small discovered fields earlier this year. It expects the blocks to eventually produce 500,000 barrels per day of oil equivalent, said Mathur.

Vedanta hopes to receive offers from companies such as Schlumberger NV, Halliburton Co and General Electric’s Baker Hughes by the first quarter of the next year.

It plans to speed up development of the blocks by getting the firms to form consortia that would deliver integrated services. It expects to get “at least four” groups to submit bids and will offer incentives to the consortia that can beat production targets, he said.

“We believe in India’s growth prospects, in its huge oil and gas potential and will commit the investment needed over the next five years in upstream activities,” Agarwal said.

Oil India buyback

Oil India’s proposed share buyback is likely to weaken its financial profile as its net leverage may rise to about 2.5 times by the end of fiscal 2020, according to Fitch Ratings.

This rate is higher than the rating agency’s previous expectation of 2.2x (times), shrinking the already low headroom for Oil India’s BBB- standalone credit profile as Fitch’s current negative rating norms for net leverage is 2.5 times.

On November 21, Oil India had announced its plans to buy back 4.45 per cent of its shares at a total cost of Rs 1,090 crore.