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Indian petro firm seeks to enter UAE market

Petroleum India International, a consortium of 10 Indian public sector petroleum and petrochemical giants, is making a serious foray into the lucrative United Arab Emirates market.

"We plan to offer petroleum industry services to the UAE oil and gas industry," Rajiv Puri, assistant director, business development, PII, said after a week of talks with several top UAE companies.

He said PII would, as a first step, register itself as a foreign company in Abu Dhabi to meet pre-qualification requirements.

"We also plan to set up an office in Abu Dhabi, depending on the response to our efforts," he said.

Puri said his meetings in Abu Dhabi as well as previous meetings held by PII Executive Chairman S K Jain with UAE officials had led to some "very firm enquiries."

The PII consortium includes ONGC, Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum, Hindustan Petroleum, Madras Refineries, Cochin Refineries, Bongaigaon Refinery, IPP and Engineers India limited, who together have a pool of 45,000 experts. "It is definitely a large resource base," Puri said.

In the 11 years of its existence, PII has provided services in 12 countries through the deputation of some 500 experts from India on long- and short-term bases.

In the middle east, PII has been active in Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

"We have, for instance, 70 engineers permanently stationed with the Kuwait National Petroleum Company," he said.

In Oman, PII recently conducted two seminars on turnaround maintenance for the Oman refinery and also deputed some experts in this area.

The PII had, in the past, also sent a few experts to the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

"We have a wide range of petroleum-related expertise to offer to the UAE oil and gas industry," Puri said.

He said PII could offer technical consultancy, training, and services in both upstream and downstream sectors.

Some of these areas include deputation of experts, refinery operations, pipeline engineering, corrosion and inspection, project management, and oil and gas production technology.

Puri said PII could also offer services in the area of upstream engineering and ocean technology for structural design, geotechnical engineering, corrosion and materials and risk and reliability analysis.

UNI