Petroleum Ministry may block oil PSUs buying GDF stake in Petronet
Petroleum Ministry may block any attempt by state-owned GAIL, IOC, ONGC and BPCL to buy 10 per cent stake of Frances GDF International in Petronet LNG Ltd as it is keen to keep the liquefied natural gas importer a private limited company. GDF, a unit of French energy giant Engie SA, has written to sell its entire stake in Petronet to the companys principal promoters — gas utility GAIL India Ltd, explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) and refiners Indian Oil Corp (IOC) and Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL). At present, the four companies hold 49.99 per cent stake of Petronet. If any of the promoters were to buy GDFs stake, the combined shareholding of state-owned firms will rise above 50 per cent and will lead to conversion of Petronet into a public sector company, something that oil ministry does not want, sources privy to the development said. Though Petronet is registered as a private company, Government of India’s Secretary in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas is its Chairman. By its private nature, the company is currently out of purview of CAG audit as well as any Parliamentary scrutiny. “We can exercise our right of first refusal to buy GDF stake but what is the use. We will never get permission from the ministry,” a top official at one of the promoters said. The Ministrys desire to keep the company private had led to none of the four promoters exercising their right of first buy when in August 2011 Asian Development Bank (ADB) offered to sell its entire 5.2 per cent stake in Petronet. All the four promoter firms IOC, ONGC, GAIL and BPCL were originally interested in buying ADBs 5.2 per cent stake but management of Petronet was opposed to it as it would have led to PSU holding crossing 50 per cent. The board of all the four promoter companies approved exercising the first right of refusal over ADB stake but the Ministry vetoed the proposal at a meeting on March 26, 2012. Eventually, ADB in September 2014 sold 39 million shares via a block deal to CitiGroup and HDFC Mutual Fund for Rs 7.145 billion. EDF holds 75 million shares in Petronet, which at Fridays closing price on BSE of Rs 448.15, is valued at Rs 33.61 billion. Petronet is Indias biggest importer of liquefied natural gas. GDF International had in March sent a communication to each of the promoters offering “a first right of purchase/refusal in relation to the proposed sale of 10 per cent equity shares in the company in the same proportion in which the promoters are holding equity shares in the company.” The four promoter firms hold 12.5 per cent stake each in Petronet. Going by this proportion, they are each entitled to buy 2.5 per cent of GDFs stake. But now, it is unlikely that anyone of them will exercise that option given that Petronet has been structured as a private company, sources added. Eddie Giacomin Authentic Jersey
GAIL to open new energy route for India with US shale gas
GAIL will open a new energy route for India early next year by beginning regular imports of shale gas from the US, adding to New Delhi’s bargaining power with its predominantly West Asian suppliers. The gas utility will begin importing gas in ships under a long-term contract from Dominion Cove Point LNG (liquefied natural gas) project from March 2018 and has floated tender for chartering ships for transportation. The company has also made a time-swap deal for a million ton of US gas for 2018-19 in an attempt to recast its supply portfolio in line with domestic demand. Chairman B C Tripathi on Monday said the company initially sees US shipments replacing spot cargoes and will charter four ships to begin with. “We bought about 55 spot cargoes totalling under four million ton of gas in 2016. This is expected to increase and be replaced by the US shipments.” Chris Herndon Authentic Jersey
India’s crude oil output dips 0.6% in April
India’s crude oil production fell 0.6 per cent to 2.93 million tonnes in April after Cairn India shut some 70-odd wells at its biggest oil field in prolific Rajasthan block. Crude oil production stood at 2.95 million tonnes in the same month last year, according to a statement by Petroleum Ministry today. State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) output was up 2.5 per cent to 1.84 million tonnes but lower production by private sector firms dragged down the overall production. Private/ joint venture fields produced 8.44 per cent less crude oil at 818,450 tonnes mainly because 70 wells on Mangala field of Cairn were shutdown for workover. Also, “few high water cut wells” were closed at Mangala while the reservoir at Bhagyam – the second biggest field in Rajasthan block, performed poor, the ministry statement said. Natural gas production was 1.8 per cent higher at 2,532.73 million standard cubic meters (mmscm) after output at ONGC fields rose 9.7 per cent to 1,790.07 mmscm. Oil refineries produced marginally lower fuel at 20 million tonnes. Public sector refiners output was almost flat but throughput at private sector refineries of Reliance Industries and Essar Oil was lower. Brock Coyle Authentic Jersey
GMR Hyderabad airport to see ₹2,500-cr capacity expansion
GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd is poised for a capital expenditure of about ?2,500 crore towards expansion of the greenfiled airport from the present capacity to handle 12 million passengers per annum to 20 mppa. The airport is already functioning at more than its capacity to handle about a million passengers a month with 2016 witness to over 15 million passengers, registering a growth of over 20 per cent in a calendar year. Expansion plans The Hyderabad airport is in the process of finalising its expansion project that would enhance the capacity to 20 million passengers a year. According to India Ratings & Research, a Fitch group company, to expand the capacity to 20 mppa, the airport will require an outlay of ?2,500 crore, of which 70 per cent will be through debt and the balance through internal accruals and equity. The airport has been witness to a strong traffic volume growth of 22 per cent. There is also the possibility of the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority enforcing the new aero charges from October 2017. This will possibly mean higher revenues. Rating upgrade India Ratings Associate Director Siva Subramanian told BuisnessLine, “The credit rating upgrade to stable reflects higher than expected growth of 22 per cent during financial year 2017 in passenger volumes. There are indicators to point that the growth is likely to sustain the current level.” All of the airport bank loans of ?1,286.4 crore, external commercial borrowings of $73.15 million, fund-based facilities of ?550 crore and two non-fund based Rs. 750 crore each have been upgraded by the rating agency to Ind AA, giving Outlook Stable. This means it will be able to easily access debt, refinance and raise funds through bonds. SGK Kishore, CEO, GHIAL, said in a recent statement, “As interim measures to manage the current traffic growth, reorientation of various passenger check points within the terminal is being tried and undertaken.” The airport reported the highest passenger growth among four private airports and its cargo volumes growth was at 10 per cent over previous financial year. Revenue growth The airport revenue increased to ?1,156 crore in FY 2017 from ?645 crore in FY 2016, due to increase in traffic and resumption in ad hoc user development fee collections. There have been reports about the developers holding parleys to divest part of their stake to a sovereign debt fund from Abu Dhabi, which has been active in India. The greenfield airport has been developed by GMR in partnership with Airports Authority of India (13 per cent), Telangana government (13 per cent) and Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (11 per cent). Andrew Billings Authentic Jersey
Airlines’ on-time performance data on DGCA radar
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation will direct Indian carriers to install the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) on all their planes to ensure that the on-time performance (OTP) they report is authentic. The step is being recommended by a committee headed by joint director-general Lalit Gupta that was formed to look into a complaint by IndiGo about discrepancies in timings reported by rivals at Mumbai airport. The report will be made public in a week, said a senior DGCA official, who did not want to be identified. “ACARS will ensure there is minimum manual intervention in reporting of landings and takeoffs at airports,” he said. IndiGo had questioned OTP monitoring at Mumbai airport in December last year and filed a complaint with DGCA after a decline in ranking from the top spots that it traditionally occupied. In November, IndiGo was at number four after SpiceJet, Jet and Vistara, with only GoAir and Air India ranked below it. Its ranking has since improved and the airline’s OTP out of Mumbai airport was second best at 78.8% in April,trailing only Vistara that clocked 81.7% with a much smaller fleet. After the complaint by IndiGo, Mumbai airport fired two employees for feeding incorrect data into the system. The official cited above said the panel found that manual intervention was responsible for the discrepancies. ACARS is used globally to record the exact landing and takeoff timings and is said to be tamper-proof. In India, IndiGo is the only airline that has ACARS on all its planes. The rest have it on their newer aircraft, experts said. “It is commonly used by airlines globally and the government should also ensure that airports in the country have infrastructure to support ACARS,” said Shakti Lumba, an aviation analyst who has been head of operations at various airlines. Spice-Jet did not comment. IndiGo welcomed the move. The other carriers didn’t respond to queries. “We welcome any step that would lead to a common system of OTP reporting by all airlines so that customers have access to accurate on-time data that is not prone to manipulation and human errors,” said IndiGo spokesmanAjay Jasra. Brandon Scherff Womens Jersey
View: Forget disinvestment, government should privatise Air India
Even as several analysts have recommended the privatisation of Air India, it has been reported that the Union government is considering disinvestment as a means of improving the finances of the so-called ‘national carrier’. ET’s columnist Swaminathan Aiyar, writing in the Times of India ( ‘The Maharaja’s Worse Than Mallya’ ) has very aptly suggested that the private budget airline IndiGo should, in fact, lay claim to be India’s ‘national carrier’, given the number of destinations across the subcontinent it now connects on a commercial basis with no government subsidy. Asked if the government was viewing disinvestment as an option, Union minister for civil aviation Ashok Gajapathi Raju reportedly said, “What else would it be? We need to make Air India a sustainable airline and we are holding discussions. All suggestions are welcome.” Here’s a suggestion. Forget disinvestment. Just privatise. For many in the government, disinvestment would be an attractive option. It would mean that the airline will remain a public sector entity with all manner of officials and ministers continuing to lord over the behemoth. However, sincere Raju may be about wanting to make Air India a ‘sustainable airline’, nothing short of a major restructuring — financial and organisational — and rebranding can save the airline. Financials Consider first the airline’s financials. Air India has drawn loans of close to Rs 50,000 crore and the annual interest burden itself is around 10 per cent of that sum and amounts to 25 per cent of the airline’s revenues from scheduled traffic services. No wonder the airline is already lagging behind on interest payments and runs the real risk of defaulting on these payments. While Air India has claimed a modest operating profit in 2016-17, insiders believe this is no more than a mirage and unlikely to materialise. What has sustained the airline is the whopping Rs 42,000-crore lifeline it was thrown in 2012 by the UPA-2 government after Praful Patel was moved out of the civil aviation ministry. Many have argued that Air India’s chronic problems were made worse during Patel’s tenure due to a variety of managerial decisions taken, including the merger of Air India and Indian Airlines. Whatever the history, the fact is that the airline’s present is miserable and future bleak. The airline is being sustained by the largesse of petroleum companies, the Airport Authority of India (AAI) and the shareholders of the Delhi and Mumbai airports. When those holding IOUs come knocking, Air India will have no cash to pay up. A four-year Turnaround Plan implemented since 2012 has not been able to address the financial problems facing Air India. Analysts believe that the airline is unlikely to be able to meet its commitments under the plan. Taken together, the airline’s poor track record in financial management and commercial operations, despite sincere efforts on the part of its management, has meant that the government has been trying desperately to breathe life into a dead body. The government’s plan to inject more funds, raised through disinvestment, will come to nought. In fact, even the disinvestment effort may well not take off. Who would want to hold the shares of an unreconstructed entity? Unviable Airline The time has come to face the hard fact that successive governments have helped kill the national carrier. However, there is no point in either crying over spilt milk or playing the blame game trying to figure out who killed Air India. It’s time the government opted out of civil aviation and sold Air India to the highest bidder. When the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government considered this option at the turn of the century, there was understandable concern both about a private monopoly replacing a public monopoly and about ensuring airline connectivity to remote parts of the subcontinent. Today, neither is a matter for concern. The healthy growth of private airlines, and the fact that at least some of them like Indigo provide connectivity to distant airports, has meant that a privatised Air India will operate in a competitive environment. To ensure that commercially unviable airports remain operational, the government can provide subsidy to any airline willing to service such airports, especially those of strategic importance. The initiative to privatise Air India will have to come from the very top of the government. Within the civil aviation ministry, within government as a whole and within Parliament, there are far too many vested interests who will oppose the move. For far too long have far too many functionaries of the State benefitted from the privileges extended by a government airline. They will oppose privatisation in the name of ‘national interest’ or workers’ privileges while seeking to defend their own. Seventy years after Independence and 20 years after the opening up of civil aviation to private airlines, the time is ripe for the government to get out of the business of flying the top 5 per cent of Indians around India and the world in the name of national interest. Andy Dalton Womens Jersey
Air India plans to raise Rs 80 crore through sale of assets
Government-run Air India plans to raise around Rs 80 crore through sale of its seven properties, including some land parcels, as a part of its asset monetisation plan. The national carrier has mandated the state-run auctioneer MSTC to put these properties under the hammer. “Air India proposes to sell its exclusive properties in the form of land parcels/built-up flats located at prime location in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Trivandrum through e-auction process by MSTC,” according to an e-auction notice posted on the airline’s website today. “We are hopeful of raising Rs 80 crore from the e-auctioning of the seven properties, which include both land parcels and flats,” a senior Air India official said. As per the turnaround plan/financial restructuring plan approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) back in 2012, Air India is required to monetise its assets and generate Rs 5,000 crore by way of sale, leasing or developing an asset as a joint venture. Under the plan, the carrier is to get financial assistance to the tune of Rs 30,000 crore over a 10-year period. Air India has been in possession of some properties which are lying vacant and unused for a long time. These include parcels of land as well as residential and commercial estates in India and abroad. So far, the carrier has been able to sell four of its flats in Mumbai to SBI for Rs 90 crore. Besides, it has also leased out almost the entire space at its previous headquarters at Nariman Point here to various government agencies. The national carrier is also in the process of leasing out around 25,500 square feet space at its Kolkata office complex. Cole Bardreau Womens Jersey
Indo-Russian project to develop aircraft hits roadblock over price, technology
An ambitious Indo-Russian project to co-develop fifth generation fighter planes has hit major roadblocks over the issues of price and technology even as New Delhi has scrapped a programme to jointly produce multirole transport aircraft with Moscow over similar issues. India and Russia had signed an agreement around 2007 to co-develop both the transport plane and the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) as part of their attempt to pool in resources to develop latest and advanced variants of the aircraft to meet the global challenges in this domain. “We have decided to scrap the Multirole Transport Aircraft (MTA) as we don’t need the plane anymore due to issues over the technology offered for the planes and constant delays,” government sources told Mail Today. The decision of the government and the Air Force has been conveyed to the Russians some time back, they said. On the FGFA programme, the sources said the aircraft being built under the plan are going to cost much more than what the Indian Air Force had expected and the technology on offer from Russia is also not up to global standards. The Russians were developing the aircraft known as PAK-FA on their side as a counter to the American F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightening which are considered the latest combat planes with stealth technologies and abilities to strike farther than their older counterparts. Nikolaj Ehlers Authentic Jersey
Mumbai now has the world’s busiest single runway airport
With its operations of 837 flights in a day or one every 65 seconds on an average, the airport at Mumbai is now the world’s busiest amongst the single-runway facilities. With one flight every 65 seconds to and from the financial capital of India, the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai has become the world’s busiest single-runway airport. Operating 837 flights a day in fiscal 2017, the GVK conglomerate-run airport has left behind London’s Gatwick, which operates 757 flights a day on its single-runway. The airport has also ruled out the London airport in terms of handling number of passengers with 45.2 million people flying in and out in fiscal 2017 as opposed to the Gatwick’s 44 million. Of the total number of passengers that flew at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, 12.4 million were international travellers. The Air Traffic Controller (ATC) manages two arrivals every 130 seconds and one departure in between these two arrivals. That means the land-starved airport handles a whopping 837 flight movements a day, which on an average is 80 flights more than Gatwick handling 757 movements in a day, a spokesperson said to Indian press. There are days when the number crosses even 900 movements a day, she added. Maxx Williams Jersey
DGCA plans to strengthen its regional offices
The civil aviation regulator in the country is decentralising its functions by strengthening its regional offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru as well as the one in New Delhi, in an effort to prepare itself for the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) audit scheduled for November. “We are in the process of hiring, and will fill all 71 posts of flight operations inspectors (FOIs) at the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) within one and a half months. Post the new hirings, we will also post FOIs at regional centres in Mumbai and Bengaluru. A regional office in Delhi, apart from the headquarters, will also be strengthened,” said a senior DGCA official, who did not want to be identified. The official further said that they may look at strengthening offices in the eastern part of the country as well, when it becomes necessary in the future. Analysts say that this move will help better regulations. “This move will surely help regulating the sector better. While the DGCA has now moved beyond Delhi to Mumbai and Bengaluru, it should also look at opening a centre in the eastern part of the country too,” said Shakti Lumba, an aviation expert, who had the experience of working as head of operations at a few airlines. The regulator had earlier also planned to depute FOIs at these centres but could not as the instructors refused to move there. They were actually hired for the headquarters, but when the DGCA insisted on sending them to other centres, they refused and resigned. “That would not be a problem this time because we have hired them for these centres only. They are being hired at these centres only and not to be placed at the headquarters,” said the official quoted above. The ICAO audit scheduled for November will weigh aviation capabilities of the Indian aviation sector, which was the largest growing market in the world till a few months back. In 2012, after an audit of the DGCA, ICAO placed India in its list of 13 worst-performing nations in terms of air safety, which had triggered an audit by the US aviation regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), in 2014, which downgraded India’s ranking, citing a lack of adequate regulatory oversight. Dale Hawerchuk Womens Jersey