Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) is pursuing the deal with Saudi Aramco under which the Saudi Arabia energy giant is expected to pick up a 20 per cent stake in RIL’s oil-to-chemicals business for $15 billion based on an enterprise valuation of $ 75 billion.

In a letter to shareholders in the company’s annual report for 2019-20, RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani said: “In the energy businesses, Reliance is working to complete the contours of a strategic partnership with Saudi Aramco. The partnership gives our refineries access to a wide portfolio of value-accretive crude grades and enhanced feedstock security for a higher oil-to-chemicals conversion.”

A flurry of deals in Jio Platforms has helped Reliance to raise over Rs 1 lakh crore from a gaggle of overseas investors, including Facebook, and along with a Rs 53,000cr rights issue in May, helped it to become a net debt free company long before a deadline set for March next year.

But it was the Aramco deal that created the buzz last year when Ambani announced that the two sides had reached a memorandum of understanding for the stake purchase by the Saudi giant in Reliance’s oil-to-chemical business.

Since then the prospects of an agreement faded because of the Covid-19 pandemic and the troubles at Aramco itself.

Ambani is now looking to seal the deal later this year, with several analysts indicating RIL could pull it off sooner rather than later though there may be a change in the valuation.

In a May report, analysts at HSBC Securities valued the oil-to-chemical business of RIL at a lower level $65 billion, meaning Reliance will get $13 billion from Aramco.

The analysts said though the crash in oil prices had raised doubts about the deal, there are significant advantages for Aramco join hands with Ambani. Besides, the additional cash flow will shift Reliance into a strong net cash position from net debt.

“RIL’s refinery is one of the most complex refineries in the world, allowing it to earn a significant premium to the benchmark Singapore gross refining margin. The combined petrochemical and refining business should provide a lot more stability to the income stream, reducing the volatility of earnings,” the report said.

The annual report further disclosed that Jio’s passive infrastructure, which includes 1,75,000 towers and 1.1 million route kilometers for fiber, has already been transferred through a scheme as of March 31, 2019, to two separate Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvIT) — a tower InvIT and a fiber InvIT.

During the year, RIL signed a binding agreement with Brookfield Infrastructure Partners LP and its institutional partners for investment in the units to be issued by the tower InvIT. Brookfield and affiliates will invest Rs 25,215 crore in the tower InvIT. The report said that discussions with potential investors for fiber InvIT are in progress.