RIL to invest Rs 1.5tn in 3 yrs

Mulls to invest in O&G exploration, production, refining and marketing, petrochemicals, retail, broadband, digital services Mumbai (PTI): Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) on Thursday announced an investment of Rs 1.5 lakh crore in core business of petrochemicals, oil and gas, retail and telecom sectors in the next 3 years. Addressing shareholders of the company RIL CMD Mukesh Ambani said, "Reliance has embarked upon its largest investment programme in its history." The investments span oil and gas exploration and production, refining and marketing, petrochemicals, retail and broadband and digital services, he said. RIL is aiming to be "among top 5 petrochemical producers in the world," he said adding the petrochem capacity is being expanded to 25 million tonnes from 15 million tonnes/year. Ambani had in the last AGM announced an investment of Rs 1,00,000 crore over 4-5 years, which has now been expanded to Rs 1.5 lakh crore and time compressed to 3 years. While RIL' partnership with UK's BP has started delivering results with a significant gas discovery being made 2-km below the currently producing fields in KG-D6 block, the company is now looking at quickly bringing into production satellite fields in the flagging block and nearby areas. Also, it is looking at beginning production from its Sohagpur coal-bed methane (CBM) blocks in Madhya Pradesh by 2015, he said. While Ambani did not give a roadmap for launch of telecom services, he said the telecom business unit will increase headcount to 10,000 next year from 3,000 currently. The unit, Reliance Jio Infocomm, is the only company to have nationwide permits for 4G broadband services, but is yet to start commercial services.