Schlumberger to set up plant near Pune

During his recently concluded Europe tour, Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh inked Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with various firms, which will bring in an investment of Rs 2,100 crore to the state.

The largest among them is an investment of Rs 900 crore from London-based Schlumberger group, which will set up a plant near Pune, to manufacture equipment needed by the oil and gas industry.

Deshmukh returned to Mumbai on Wednesday night from the week-long tour, during which he visited Switzerland, the UK, and Italy.

Apart from the heads of industry from Europe, he met many government officials, and had talks with them on extending cooperation between Maharashtra and these countries in the fields of tourism, agro processing, technical education, etc.

 

He also delivered an address at the round table conference in London. A strong delegation of Indian industry was present, which included Mahindra and Mahindra's Vice-Chairman Anand Mahindra, Bharat Forge's Chairman Baba Kalyani, Volks Wagon India's Chairman Jeorge Muller, Tata Infrastructure and Reality's CEO Sanjay Ubale, Ficci's Secretary General Amit Mitra and Aditya Birla group's Chief Economist Ajit Ranade.

Addressing a Press conference on Thursday, Deshmukh said, "It took a lot of persuasion on our part to convince Schlumberger to come to Maharashtra, which had earlier shown interest in Southern India. But we managed to convince Schlumberger on the geographical advantage Maharashtra offers,” he said.

Schumberger, which offers technological solutions to the oil and gas industry, will set up its plant in the Special Economic Zone (SEZ), which will come up near Pune and will be operational by 2010. It will provide employment to 1,000 people.