New Delhi, Jan. 7 (PTI): Royal Dutch/Shell will source petrol and diesel from Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL) for its upcoming 2000 petrol stations in the country.
On January 5, Shell India Pvt Ltd signed a memorandum of understanding with MRPL, a subsidiary of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, for buying transport fuels. “The two companies will work out the pricing and other terms,” sources said.
Shell has secured a conditional licence to set up 2000 petrol stations in the country for retailing transport fuel. It had earlier announced plans to set up its first petrol pump by June.
MRPL and Shell will also share storage and handling infrastructure.
ONGC, which plans to fuel its upcoming 1,100 petrol pumps across the country from the 9.69-million tonnes Mangalore refinery, is in the process of setting up storage and other marketing infrastructure and the MOU with Shell will help avoid duplication of the costly infrastructure.
Meanwhile, MRPL today pre-paid Rs 2,380 crore loan and said it plans to prepay the remaining Rs 257 crore of debt by January 19. “MRPL has pre-paid the entire facilities 'A' and 'B' of rupee term lenders under the debt restructuring package (approved when it was taken over by ONGC in March 2003) aggregating to Rs 2,380 crore,” a release said.
