Saudi Aramco deal on hold due to pandemic situation: Mukesh Ambani

Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], July 15 : Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) Chairman Mukesh Ambani on Wednesday said the deal with Saudi Aramco has not progressed according to the scheduled time due to ongoing pandemic situation.
"Deal with Saudi Aramco hasn't progressed per original timeline due to unforeseen situation in the energy market and COVID-19 situation. We value our two-decade relationship with Aramco and are committed to long term partnership," Ambani said while speaking at the 43rd Annual General Meeting of the company.
The RIL Chairman said the KG-D6 can be restarted towards the end of the year to provide India with natural gas, which is one of the cleanest fossil fuels.
The company is looking to spin off its Oil-to-Chemicals (O2C) business into a separate subsidiary to facilitate multiple partnership opportunities.
"We have approached the NCLT with our proposal to spin off our O2C business into a separate subsidiary to facilitate multiple partnership opportunities. We expect to complete this process by early 2021," Ambani said.
He said that the company's O2C business has outperformed the sector amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and delivered an Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) of Rs 55,394 crore.
This comes as the global refining and petrochemicals industry faced a major challenge as businesses and consumer activities came to a halt leading to unprecedented demand destruction and dislocation of margins amid the lockdown.
"Despite that, I am glad to report that all our manufacturing facilities continued to operate at over 90 per cent capacity utilisation. During the lockdown, RIL leveraged its deep understanding of global markets, enhanced petrochemical and fuel exports over 2.5 times in just two weeks. In April 2020, the O2C business accounted for nearly 50 per cent of India's exports," he said.
Ambani announced that the company has commissioned India's first Butyl Rubber plant, which places it amongst the world's top 10 producers of Butyl Rubber.
"Reliance is approached by global companies for strategic partnerships in its petrochemicals business. The potential partnerships will help Reliance build competitive manufacturing capacity to serve India's demand for chemicals," he said.
Claiming to reimagine the entire energy platform, Ambani said that it is imperative that the energy industry adopts a clean, circular, sustainable and planet-friendly model that delivers green and affordable energy to all the 7.8 billion people on the planet.
"Reliance is committed to embracing new technologies to convert CO2 into useful products and chemicals. Transforming our energy business to tackle a big challenge before India and the World is our new growth opportunity," he said.
Ambani said that in the years to come, Reliance will create more growth engines accelerating its diversified growth and among them, is its vision of becoming new energy and new materials company.