Mukesh sees potential for gas-based economy

It was a working Sunday for him as well, but that didn’t stop Mukesh Ambani from apologising repeatedly to mediapersons for “spoiling their weekend”.

Journalists from all over the country had gathered at the giant state-of-the-art conference room at the Reliance Corporate Centre in Navi Mumbai, just a stone’s throw away from the Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge Centre, which is now the headquarters of his brother, Anil Ambani.

India’s richest man and his wife, Nita Ambani, went around shaking hands and thanking everybody present for sharing the company’s moment of glory. After all, it’s not often that a company can start producing oil within two years of the first discovery.

The speech that followed would do any politician proud, as it dwelt on the need for inclusive growth and how his mission is to see that the benefit of the hydrocarbon production reaches millions of Indians.

In the process, the Reliance chairman also gave a fascinating account of how the company, which will soon account for around 40 per cent of the country’s oil & gas production, can change the energy landscape of the country. It can also potentially lead to a new gas-based economy, he said.

Terming natural gas as the 21st Century fuel, Ambani said India now has the opportunity to leapfrog the use of clean energy and directly benefit the people.

Ambani said 550,000 barrels per day of hydrocarbons can feed cooking gas to 100 to 120 million households. Also, India now has the opportunity to provide natural gas to over 50 million two-wheelers, five million cars and 10 million trucks.

It is also now possible to provide distributed power generation for thousands of megawatts of power, which can meet the requirement of lighting for over 80 million households. And all this can be achieved at costs which are easily comparable to grid costs.

More importantly, it can be completed in a matter of few months, he said. Ambani talked about how the company achieved this feat by deploying state-of-the-art drilling and production technologies and operated an efficient supply-chain system with sea and air logistics support.

“Essentially we created an entire production system 8,000 feet under the sea. At the peak, we have over 90 sea-going vessels – to create a large production system under the sea,” he said.

Towards the end of his interaction, an emotional Ambani paid gratitude to his late father, Dhirubhai Ambani, who, he said, taught him to “keep away from the attraction of paper wealth – a reason why he has always dismissed the much-advertised attention towards financial gamesmanship.”