The government on Wednesday said there was no proposal to either merge Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum with Oil and Natural Gas Corp or Oil India Ltd with Indian Oil Corporation.
"There is no proposal or move to merge oil companies. We are not considering it as of now," petroleum secretary S C Tripathi told reporters in New Delhi.
Tripathi's comment came in view of news report that the ministry of petroleum was preparing a blueprint for creating two vertically integrated oil companies by merging HPCL and BPCL with ONGC and OIL with IOC.
"Lot of ideas are mooted by different stakeholders merchant bankers, consultants and various other parties," Tripathi said without detailing if anyone particular has floated such an idea.
"These (mergers) are big things. This cannot happen just like that. We have not even discussed such a proposal with the oil companies," Tripathi said.