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Strategies & Market Trends : India Stocks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LoneClone who wrote (2290)	8/23/2010 8:58:10 AM
From: LoneClone	Respond to of 2517

Indian Companies Said to Consider Countering Vedanta's Bid for Cairn Unit By Rakteem Katakey and George Smith Alexander - Aug 23, 2010 5:18 AM PT bloomberg.com Indian state-run energy companies are considering bidding for a stake in Cairn India Ltd., countering Vedanta Resources Plc’s $9.6 billion offer for the explorer, according to two people familiar with the matter. India’s oil ministry has instructed Oil & Natural Gas Corp. to study the possibility of making a counter offer, one of the people said. GAIL India Ltd. may join ONGC, another person said. Vedanta, the mining company controlled by billionaire Anil Agarwal, agreed this month to buy as much as 60 percent of Cairn Energy Plc’s Indian unit to gain access to the country’s biggest onshore oil field. ONGC owns a 30 percent stake in the field and is seeking to increase production as output from 30-year-old fields declines. The Press Trust of India earlier reported ONGC, India’s largest explorer, Oil India Ltd. and GAIL have arranged $10 billion in funds from international banks to fund a possible bid. R.S. Sharma, ONGC’s chairman, and Oil Secretary S. Sundareshan, the senior-most bureaucrat in the ministry, declined to comment. Oil India Chairman N.M. Borah and GAIL’s Chairman B.C. Tripathi didn’t answer calls to their mobile phones. Gordon Simpson, a spokesman for Vedanta, declined to comment, while David Nisbet, the head of group corporate affairs for Cairn Energy, didn’t respond to an e-mail sent to him. To contact the reporters on this story: Rakteem Katakey in New Delhi at rkatakey@bloomberg.net; George Smith Alexander in Mumbai at galexander11@bloomberg.net.