GAIL: Energy management services for Bangladesh companies
Mumbai: GAIL (India) Ltd will offer Energy Management Services to industries in Bangladesh. GAIL plans to provide energy management services to the gas users of Bangladesh on cost sharing basis, the release said.

A company delegation visited Bangladesh last week to discuss cooperation and participation in areas such as pipelines, gas processing and CNG with some of the country's State and private firms, a news release has said. The delegation also met Bangladesh's Energy Minister A.K.M. Mosharraf Hossain.

The company has held talks with Bangladesh State energy firms such as Petrobangla, Gas Transmission Company Ltd (GTCL), Titas Gas, RPGCL, major gas consumers and others.
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Anil questions Mukesh on ownership issue
New Delhi: Anil Ambani has questioned his elder brother Mukesh on his assertion that ownership issues were settled in the lifetime of their father Dhirubhai.

"If management issues had been resolved in Dhirubhai's lifetime, how is that no disclosure has been made to the stock exchanges and (market regulator) SEBI till today," Anil questioned. Seeking clarification through five questions, Anil asked Mukesh to explain as to why his powers as Managing Director were sought to be substantially curtailed in July 2004, and not much earlier.

He further questioned his brother on why no disclosures have been made on the issue to the Reliance Industries board or its 36 lakh individual and institutional shareholders. On November 22, Mukesh had said that all ownership issues were settled during the lifetime of late Dhirubhai Ambani. A day later, he said in an e-mail to all Reliance employees that he was the final authority on all matters concerning the company.
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Amul marks its foray into Kashmir valley
Srinagar: Amul has taken over the state's milk processing plant in the Valley. The milk-processing unit now is fully functional with state-of-the-art technology. What has drawn Amul to the valley is the record production in the state, which is higher than the national average. The new processing unit has also opened up a nationwide market to Kashmir's dairy farmers at their doorstep. Local dairy farmers have benefited greatly, since now they don't have to go door-to-door selling the milk.

In the first phase, 10,000 litres of milk are processed in this plant. Officials say the production will go up 20,000 litres within a month. This milk processing plant in Srinagar was established way back in 1960 but it was almost useless for ordinary dairy farmers who were exploited by middlemen.
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Jindal Stainless plans captive thermal unit in Orissa
Mumbai: Jindal Stainless Ltd proposes to set up a captive thermal power plant to meet its future requirements in Orissa. The power plant will have two modules of 125 MW each - total of 250 MW. The expected date for completion of the first module would be 24 months. The total project cost is estimated to be around Rs850 crore.

The order has been placed with BHEL and an advance of Rs26 crore has also been paid. The entire project is expected to be financed on a debt equity ratio of 1.5:1.
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Tata Steel planning three million tonne integrated steel plant
Jamshedpur: Tata Steel plans to set up a 3-million-tonnes-a-year integrated steel plant, for which it is in talks with a State Government.

Disclosing this, the Tata Steel Managing Director, B. Muthuraman, said, "We are also negotiating with another State to locate another steel plant." He expected work on the plant to commence "very quickly" and production to begin in three to four years. However, Muthuraman would not reveal the State or the total cost of the project.

All that he said was the plant would be an integrated one and the company was "moving very fast on our plan."

The proposed 3-mt plant does not form part of Tata Steel's announced plans to increase its production capacity to 15 mt a year by 2010. This includes increasing capacity at its Jamshedpur plant from 4 mt now to 7.4 mt by August 2008, the acquisition of NatSteel in Singapore, which will bring in another 2 mt, and the proposed 6-mt plant in Orissa.

Tata Steel will look at buying steel plants mostly overseas and is examining possibilities in South-East Asia, China, West Asia and Iran. It had signed an agreement with the Bangladesh Government to study the possibility of setting up a steel plant using gas.
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IOC and Oil India ink pact for overseas exploration projects
New Delhi: IOC has inked a 10-year agreement with oil exploration firm Oil India Ltd (OIL) for foraying into upstream business of oil as well as other related prospects in the hydrocarbon chain.

Besides working on oil and gas exploration in India, the two companies will bid together for acquiring oil and gas properties abroad, IOC has said in a statement on Wednesday.

IOC is the country's largest refining and marketing company but does not have a presence in upstream oil and gas exploration and properties (E&P), whereas Oil India, a smaller E&P company, lacks the financial muscle to acquire oil and gas properties abroad.
Indian Oil has identified vertical integration along the entire hydrocarbon value chain as a key strategy for assured growth in the future. As per the MoU, which will be effective for a period of 10 years, both the companies will have equal participating interests in overseas opportunities. OIL will be the operator for all upstream projects wherever the combine acquires operational rights overseas.

Currently, ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the overseas arm of ONGC, is the only company bidding for oil and gas properties abroad.

The IOC-OIL joint venture will concentrate on acquiring small and medium sized oil and gas properties, while OVL's role would be re-drafted into a company that will focus primarily on taking over big investment properties.
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HPCL and MRPL in talks for LNG terminal
Mumbai: Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd is in talks with Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd to set up a natural gas import terminal at Mangalore. The terminal will have an initial capacity to import 2.5 million tonne liquefied natural gas a year and could later be expanded to 5 mt.

The terminal would need investments of around Rs2,500 crore and may be set up as a joint venture between HPCL and MRPL. HPCL holds 17 per cent stake in MRPL, while ONGC holds 72 per cent in the company.

While ONGC and MRPL will handle procurement of natural gas, HPCL may market the imported commodity. The company is also in talks with Shell for picking up a stake in its Hazira LNG import terminal.

In a bid to meet the volatility in international crude oil prices, HPCL will invest Rs2,000 crore on revamping its Trombay and Visakh refineries to process sour crude up to 80 per cent of their total capacity by 2007.
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Red Hat to localize Linux
New Delhi: Red Hat has said it plans to localise its offerings in 13 Indian languages by March 2006 and ramp-up its localisation headcount in the country to 100 professionals.

It says that it already has Red Hat Enterprise Linux beta version in five languages including Hindi, Bengali, Tamil and Gujarati, which will be commercially released in February 2005. In the next 15 months, it will localise its products in eight more languages including Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Oriya.

The company says it is more bullish on India as it was the fastest growing market for Red Hat in Asia Pacific outside Japan.
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