Last week, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine an­nounced that the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny and the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion are very close to fi­nal­is­ing a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with the Re­liance Group, In­dia's largest pri­vate sec­tor en­ter­prise, with busi­ness­es in the en­er­gy and ma­te­ri­als val­ue chain. Re­liance has pro­posed to Gov­ern­ment to fa­cil­i­ty to up­grade bi­tu­men (ex­tra heavy oil) in­to syn­thet­ic crude oil, at Union Es­tate, La Brea. Re­liance, with which BP tak­ing a 30 per cent stake in 23 oil and gas pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tracts that Re­liance op­er­ates in In­dia. Re­liance and BP al­so have a 50-50 joint ven­ture to source and mar­ket gas in In­dia. The joint ven­ture will al­so en­deav­our to ac­cel­er­ate the cre­ation of in­fra­struc­ture for re­ceiv­ing, trans­port­ing and mar­ket­ing of nat­ur­al gas in In­dia.

The part­ner­ship will com­bine BP's world-class deep­wa­ter ex­plo­ration and de­vel­op­ment ca­pa­bil­i­ties with Re­liance's project man­age­ment and op­er­a­tions ex­per­tise. BP will pay Re­liance In­dus­tries Lim­it­ed an ag­gre­gate con­sid­er­a­tion of US$7.2 bil­lion, and com­ple­tion ad­just­ments, for the in­ter­ests to be ac­quired in the 23 pro­duc­tion shar­ing con­tracts. Fu­ture per­for­mance pay­ments of up to US$1.8 bil­lion could be paid based on ex­plo­ration suc­cess that re­sults in de­vel­op­ment of com­mer­cial dis­cov­er­ies. These pay­ments and com­bined in­vest­ment could amount to US$20 bil­lion. BP has been work­ing with Re­liance since De­cem­ber 2008 on the D-17 deep­wa­ter block in the Kr­ish­na Go­davari (KG) basin on the east coast of In­dia. BP, with a 50 per cent in­ter­est, op­er­ates the block and Re­liance holds the re­main­ing in­ter­est. BP has a strong pres­ence in In­dia in ad­di­tion to its in­ter­est in block D-17.

Re­liance In­dus­tries Ltd (RIL) is In­dia's largest pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­ny on all ma­jor fi­nan­cial pa­ra­me­ters. RIL runs the world's largest re­fin­ing com­plex at Jam­na­gar with two plants of com­bined ca­pac­i­ty of 1.24 mil­lion bar­rels per day. It has al­so been buy­ing up shale gas as­sets in the Unit­ed States and has in­ter­ests in petro­chem­i­cals and re­tail, and is now look­ing at di­ver­si­fy­ing.

Com­pa­nies in Re­liance Group: Re­liance So­lar was es­tab­lished with an aim to bring so­lar en­er­gy sys­tems and so­lu­tions pri­mar­i­ly to re­mote and rur­al ar­eas. Re­liance So­lar has de­vel­oped prod­ucts, sys­tems and so­lu­tions are part of the down­stream com­po­nent of the so­lar val­ue chain. Re­liance is con­cur­rent­ly work­ing on de­vel­op­ing the up­stream and mid­stream com­po­nents in an in­te­grat­ed man­ner-from poly­sil­i­con to in­gots, wafers, cells and mod­ules. Re­liance Pe­tro­le­um Ltd was set up to har­ness an emerg­ing val­ue cre­ation op­por­tu­ni­ty in the glob­al re­fin­ing sec­tor. Re­liance Lo­gis­tics Ltd is a "sin­gle win­dow so­lu­tions provider" for all your trans­porta­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion, ware­hous­ing, lo­gis­tics, and sup­ply chain needs, sup­port­ed by in house state-of-the-art telem­at­ics and teleme­try so­lu­tions.

Re­liance In­dus­tri­al In­fra­struc­ture Ltd is main­ly en­gaged in the busi­ness of set­ting up/op­er­at­ing in­dus­tri­al in­fra­struc­ture. The com­pa­ny is al­so en­gaged in re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties in­volv­ing leas­ing and pro­vid­ing ser­vices con­nect­ed with com­put­er soft­ware and da­ta pro­cess­ing. Re­liance Life Sci­ences aims to at­tain glob­al lead­er­ship through in­no­v­a­tive and cost-ef­fec­tive so­lu­tions for a bet­ter life. Re­liance Clin­i­cal Re­search Ser­vices is a clin­i­cal re­search or­gan­i­sa­tion aimed at pro­vid­ing world-class clin­i­cal re­search ser­vices to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, biotech­nol­o­gy and med­ical de­vice com­pa­nies. Re­liance In­sti­tute of Life Sci­ences one of the cen­tres of ex­cel­lence es­tab­lished by the Dhirub­hai Am­bani Foun­da­tion (DAF), is an in­sti­tu­tion ded­i­cat­ed to pro­vid­ing grad­u­ate, post­grad­u­ate, doc­tor­al, re­search and con­tin­u­ing ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes in var­i­ous do­mains of life sci­ences and re­lat­ed tech­nolo­gies.