Essar oil hopes to refinance about $1.8 billion of debt in 3-6 months

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Essar Oil hopes to refinance about $1.8 billion worth of debt in 3-6 months, LK Gupta, chief executive officer and managing director, told reporters on Friday.

"The focus is on dollarisation of debt. We expect to complete this in the next 3-6 months," Gupta said.

Essar Oil has RBI approval for refinancing upto $2.27 billion of rupee debt to dollars, and so far it has refinanced $481 million.

The privately-run refiner posted a net profit of 2 billion rupees in the quarter ended March. 31, from a loss of 5.15 billion rupees in the same period a year ago.

(Reporting by Prashant Mehra; Editing by Anupama Dwivedi)