Texaco, one of the 15 largest corporations of the US, will, over the next 8 years, invest $1 billion in a methane gas project in Gujarat, Texaco's managing director for India, Jagjit S Yadav, said.
We see enough potential in India. There is a lot of exciting things happening in the energy sector, Yadav said.
The Gujarat project will produce 200 million cubic feet of gas a day which would increase to 500 million cubic feet at full production, Yadav added.
It is a great location and you don't need pipelines to transport gas, he said.
The project, in which Texaco and Reliance Industries are 50:50 partners, is to come up near Ahmedabad, he revealed.
Yadav, who will soon be visiting the country to do the groundwork for setting up an office in Delhi, said work on the Gujarat project should start fairly quickly. The project, yet to receive government approval, however, could take several years before being fully operational he added.
Asked if Enron's experience in India had in any way sent wrong signals to Texaco, Yadav said, each project is different adding, we have to be cost-competitive, and all parties have to emerge winners.
Yadav, expects Texaco's India office to be fully functional by January 1.
Texaco's interests in India are at present being looked after by Caltex Petroleum Corporation, a joint venture with Chevron. Texaco has major interests in Asia.
It's affiliate, P T Caltex Pacific Indonesia, owned equally by Texaco and Chevron, is Indonesia's largest oil producer, accounting for 45 per cent of the nation's oil production.
In China, a consortium of Agrip, Chevron, Texaco and the China National Offshore Oil Company had added two new fields in 1995, more than doubling production to 115,000 barrels of oil a day, of which Texaco's share is 16 per cent.
