India's Reliance says not to continue with O2C unit sale to Aramco

Logo of Reliance Industries Limited 

India's Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) announced that it reached an agreement with Saudi Aramco, under which the former will not continue with talks and procedures of selling its stake in oil-to-chemicals (O2C) business to the latter.

"Due to evolving nature of Reliance’s business portfolio, Reliance and Saudi Aramco have mutually determined that it would be beneficial for both parties to re-evaluate the proposed investment in O2C business in light of the changed context," the Indian company said in a statement.

Consequently, the current application with NCLT for segregating the O2C business from RIL is being withdrawn, it added.

In August 2019, Reliance and Saudi Aramco signed a non-binding Letter of Intent for a potential 20% stake acquisition by Saudi Aramco in the O2C business of Reliance.

Saudi Aramco was discussing the purchase of a roughly 20% stake in the Reliance unit for about $20-25 billion worth of Aramco shares, Bloomberg earlier reported.

Abdulaziz Al-Gudaimi, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development, earlier said the deal would boost the company's total refining capacity to more than 8 million barrels per day.