Saudi Aramco signs preliminary deal to invest in India's 1.2 MMbpd West Coast refinery
State oil company Saudi Aramco has signed a preliminary deal to invest in India's planned 1.2 MMbpd West Coast refinery. Falih said Aramco was also looking at buying stakes in existing major refiners and expansion projects in India.
He did not specify the size of stake Aramco will take in the west coast refinery, but added: "the more the better."
"Agreements have been already signed that allows discussions to start on the configuration of the (west coast) refinery, on design basis and pre-feasibility studies," he said. "One is the greenfield west coast refinery, which is already public, but there are discussions with expansions as well as buying stake into major existing refinery assets. All of these are illustrated commitments by the Kingdom and the company to be not only a supplier but an investor in India at an unmatched scale," he added.
According to Al-Falih, "India is open for partnership, open for business, we welcome that, we welcome Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi's pro-business environment, we believe in it, we believe its here to stay and have told Aramco team to assign zero political and regulatory risk to India and treat it as part of Saudi Arabia."
India aims to expand its refining capacity by 77 percent to about 8.8 MMbpd by 2030.
Falih said Saudi Arabia would also sign oil supply deals as part of the agreement to buy stakes in Indian refineries, a strategy the kingdom has adopted to expand its market share in Asia and fend off rivals.
Last year, Saudi Arabia pledged billions of dollars of investments in projects in Indonesia and Malaysia to secure long-term oil supply deals.
(Reporting by Nidhi Verma and Sudarshan Varadhan; Editing by Mark Potter)
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