At least half a dozen national and international oil giants, including Reliance and Royal Dutch Shell, joined the race, on Friday, for acquiring government's 34 per cent stake in Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd.
Monday was the last date for submission of Expression of Interest for HPCL, which the divestment ministry had sought a month ago soon after it decided to divest stake in two public sector oil companies Hindustan Petroleum Corporation and Bharat Petroleum Corporation.
Although the divestment ministry remained tight-lipped about the response, sources said a consortium of Essar Group companies besides international oil giant Saudi Aramco also filed their EoIs.
Others who have thrown in their hat include ChevronTexco of US and Petronas of Malayasia.
Kuwait Petroleum is also believed to be in the race but there was no confirmation till this evening as to whether it has submitted an EoI. Likewise, it could not be ascertained if Sun Group of Russia had submitted its EoI. Almost all the interested parties including Reliance are understood to have filed their papers on Monday and now the government would scrutinise the initial bids before going ahead with the divestment process of HPCL, for which HSBC is believed to have been appointed as global advisor.
Consumer electronics giant Videocon, which has interest in power ando, decided to keep away from the race for HPCL after evincing interest earlier, sources said.
The government is in the process of offloading 34.01 per cent of its 51 per cent stake in HPCL, along with management control to a strategic partner, while another five per cent stake would be offered to the employees at concessional rates.
Post divestment, the government equity in HPCL would come down to 12 per cent.
As per the pre-eligibility criteria, the bidders either singular or in a consortium would have to have net worth of at least Rs 2,500 crore (Rs 25 billion) to submit expression of interest for equity in HPCL.
Further in case of consortium, net worth of only the partners would be taken into account who intend to have 10 per cent stake in the joint bid.
Even as the divestment in HPCL is going ahead in full throttle, the process of divestment of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd, where the government would divest 35.2 per cent stake through market offerings, is yet to gain speed as the Centre is yet to invite bids for appointment of merchant bankers who would manage the IPOs.
