Oil India, the country's second largest exploration and production company, is slated to offer its shares to the public in the next few weeks, following the pre-IPO placement to government owned Indian Oil [Get Quote], Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum. The government-owned Oil India had roped in British Gas as its bidding partner for deep offshore blocks in the next round of government auctions (NELP VII). While the company is mobilising funds to expand its core activities of exploration and production, it is also looking at diversification, chairman and managing director MS Pasrija told PB JayaKumar and Kalpana Pathak in an interview. Excerpts

What is the update on your proposed initial public offer?

The primary offering is scheduled for the second week of February. We plan to raise more than 4,500 crore (Rs 45 billion) to fund our exploration and production (E&P) plans.

What will be your investment strategy?

We plan to spend Rs 2,711 crore (Rs 27.11 billion) towards exploration activity and appraisal and Rs 873 crore (Rs 8.73 billion) for development in existing acreages in fiscal 2009 and 2010. Our interest domestically lies in bidding for NELP rounds to acquire more geographically balanced exploration acreage. In the past six NELP biddings, we bid for 46 exploration blocks and were successful in acquiring 23. Our MoU with Indian Oil Corporation allows us to enter into project-specific agreements for overseas natural gas and oil exploration.

What are your plans for bidding for NELP VII? Who will be your partner?

We have signed an MoU with British Gas Exploration and Production India to jointly bid for the NELP VII rounds. We would bid for deep offshore blocks with British Gas, where BG will be the operator. Oil India will, however, be the operator for onshore blocks.

What is your investment strategy in the next five years

We would focus on E&P. The planning commission has approved Rs 9,303 crore (Rs 93.03 billion) towards the eleventh five-year plan outlay. An amount of Rs 1,420 crore (Rs 14.20 billion) would be spent on NELP exploration.

Are you planning to diversify into newer areas?

We propose to invest in downstream activities such as crude refining and gas cracker project. We have entered an MoU with Hindustan Petroleum Corporation [Get Quote], GAIL, Mittal Energy Investments and Total France with the objective of studying and evaluating the feasibility of building an integrated refinery and petrochemical complex at Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.

Pipelines are a promising area of growth. Any plans there?

Our core competence lies in the pipeline business. We own and operate a 1,157 km cross country crude oil pipeline with an annual crude oil capacity of over 44 million barrels, as a common carrier for us, ONGC [Get Quote] and Bongaigon Refinery. We certainly see a lot of growth in the area of pipelines, but plans cannot be divulged at this point.