Indian Oil Corporation, the nation's biggest refiner, is in talks to acquire a fuel retailing company in Turkey as it expands operations in the country bordering Europe.
IOC has tied up with Calik Enerji of Turkey to takeover a fuel retailing company in Turkey, a company official said but declined to identify the target company.
The once state-owned POAS is the leading player in the distribution, marketing and storage of refining petroleum products in Turkey. Besides, several other companies also have a sizeable market share, including BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, Total, and Turkish company Opet.
IOC had in consortium with Calik early this month won a license to build an oil refinery in Turkey. "It will be a 15 million tons refinery costing $4.9 billion," the official said. The refinery will be at Ceyhan, where the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and a pipeline from Iraq terminate. The refinery would cater to the export markets.
Calik Enerji and IOC are also building a $1.5 billion pipeline that is designed to carry Russian and Kazakh oil from the Black Sea port of Samsun to the Mediterranean, bypassing the congested and bad weather-prone