“The restriction of a guarantee to a finite amount is driven by regulations in India, which do not allow open-ended guarantees for obligations of offshore subsidiaries.”

“The two-day road show in Houston from July 14 will be held to promote the 67 Discovered Small Fields (DSF) Bid Round 2016,” a Petroleum Ministry source here told PTI.

“We are expecting the government to come up with the notification soon. In anticipation we are readying ourselves to start production as soon as possible.”

“The two-day road show in Houston from July 14 will be held to promote the 67 Discovered Small Fields (DSF) Bid Round 2016,” a Petroleum Ministry source here told PTI.

US shale reserves are the lowest-cost option for future oil production and are likely to attract more investment than competing projects such as deepwater fields, according to a leading industry adviser.

About 60 per cent of the oil production that is economically viable at a crude price of $60 a barrel is in , and only about 20 per cent is in deep water, said Wood Mackenzie, the consultancy.

Companies with US shale assets are likely to be at a competitive advantage over the next few years. Producers that rely on oilfields in higher-cost regions such as the North Sea and the deep waters off west Africa will have to cut costs or face shrinking output.

After the oil price plunge that began two years ago, production costs have been cut across the industry, but far more so in US shale.

Average costs per barrel have dropped by 30 to 40 per cent for US shale wells, but just 10 to 12 per cent for other oil projects, said Simon Flowers of Wood Mackenzie.

US shale regions that two years ago were in the middle of the cost curve for future oil supplies are now down towards the lower end.

Investments in the Eagle Ford shale of south Texas on average need a Brent crude price of $48 a barrel to break even, on Wood Mackenzie’s calculations, while projects in the Wolfcamp formation in the Permian Basin in west Texas need $39.

“There are more opportunities to invest in the US, and that’s where the investment will take place,” said Mr Flowers.

“If your investment options are in deep water, you’ve got quite a task on your hands. You might be asking: ‘Should we be getting into tight [shale] oil?’”

Brent was trading at $47.59 per barrel on Wednesday.

US companies that have shale oil reserves, including Chevron and ExxonMobil, have stressed the flexibility of those assets, which are developed with many wells costing a few million dollars each, rather than the multibillion-dollar projects often required for offshore production.

On Wood Mackenzie’s calculations, Brazil’s deepwater oilfields are so large that some will be commercially viable, but higher-cost regions could struggle to attract investment.

The number of large projects being given the go-ahead by oil and gas companies averaged 40 a year between 2007 and 2013 but to just eight last year, according to Angus Rodger, also of Wood Mackenzie.

Although there has been a small flurry of investment decisions in the past few weeks, including the Chevron-led of in Kazakhstan, Mr Rodger expects only about 10 new big projects will go ahead this year.

While the economics of US shale are generally more attractive, Mr Flowers said the and workers to increase drilling and production meant that in a few years. That could drive oil prices to $80 to $85 per barrel in 2019-20, he added.

India’s thirst for gasoline has soared 12.6 percent in the first six months of the year from 2015, growing at more than double the pace of China.

India consumed 48.5 million tons of oil products in the quarter, an increase of 7.8% from the same period a year ago, according to oil ministry data.

India’s thirst for gasoline has soared 12.6 percent in the first six months of the year from 2015, growing at more than double the pace of China.

It is easy to find horror stories of doing business in .

In April, Acacia Mining, a London-listed gold producer, issued a press release denying that it was running a scheme in Tanzania following a tribunal ruling against it in the country.

Standard Chartered Bank, listed in London and Hong Kong, is meanwhile over the alleged extraction of funds from Independent Power Tanzania, an energy company.

Foreign diplomats are far from effusive in their praise for the country’s investment climate, despite the 7 per cent annual growth rate. “Ministers are walking the talk that a lot of the investment they’re doing, like building roads, will help facilitate private sector-led growth,” one says. “But we’re also seeing contradictory actions. There’s ingrained in many serving government officials a suspicion of the private sector and that skews how they look at it.”

Tanzania is ranked 139 out of 189 countries in the World Bank’s ease of doing business index. Sirili Akko, executive secretary of the Tanzania Association of Tour Operators, says the ranking is “fair”, citing the average of 128 days each year it takes his members to renew all the permits they require to operate.

A lack of policy certainty is exacerbating the situation. When became president in November he “came charging out of the blocks and the country didn’t know what had hit it,” in the words of one foreign investor.

He has clamped down on corruption and smuggling, imposed austerity measures and sought to increase tax revenues. Jayesh Shah, managing director of manufacturing conglomerate Sumaria Group and vice-chairman of the Confederation of Tanzania Industries, says: “There is bound to be some short-term pain because the government is trying to address the issues that were brushed under the table.”

Toby Bradbury, chief executive of London-listed miner Shanta Gold, also welcomes the push against corruption but adds: “The government now needs to settle down and provide direction.”

Mr Shah believes that it is going to be hard to change after decades of socialist administration. “I think it’s very difficult to get away from that socialist mentality and that distrust of the private sector,” he says. He argues that recent changes to the tax regime have made doing business “much harder”.

Government officials acknowledge there is “anxiety” among businesspeople but it is trying to reassure investors. “The socialist legacy that this country is proud of has moved on,” says Adolf Mkenda, permanent secretary of the trade and investment ministry. “We’ve realised that private investment is key to stimulating the economy.”

Statistics suggest that despite the negative stories, investors believe it is still worth investing in Tanzania. The Tanzania Investment Centre registered 551 projects worth $9.2bn between December and May, which compares favourably with the 458 projects worth $5.7bn registered in the six months before Mr Magufuli became president.

While Standard Chartered and Acacia are contesting the claims against them, they nonetheless appear to be committed to the country. Andrew Wray, Acacia’s chief financial officer, said in a video published on the company’s website in May that the challenges were “nothing I wouldn’t expect to see in a long-term relationship”. He added: “We’ve been in Tanzania for over 15 years and fully expect to continue for another 30 years.”

If a key priority for , as many experts say, is to upgrade the quality and capacity of its roads and ports and to make full use of its untapped energy resources, then having a president nicknamed the “Bulldozer” seems like a promising start.

Before his surprise selection as presidential candidate for the ruling party last year, John Magufuli spent two stints as minister of public works. In that role, the former industrial chemist — who has an engineer’s eye for detail and a reputation for getting things done — became renowned for impromptu visits to construction sites where he would sniff out delays and malfeasance. The country’s road network, much of it built and financed by China, improved under his watch.

Those qualities will be very much required if Tanzania is to build on that success. The latest budget puts renewed emphasis on infrastructure, with a dramatic shift in priorities from current to capital spending.

A string of projects, covering everything from rural electrification to improvements to regional road and rail links, could significantly raise economic potential as well as improve the lives of ordinary people. Tanzania, with its long coastline and proximity to six landlocked countries, should be able to use its influence as a transport conduit for an integrating east African trade bloc.

Top of the list is power. About only a fifth of Tanzanians have access to electricity and, even in the urban centres, manufacturers must contend with costly and sporadic supply. When the reliance on hydropower was exposed as unsustainable during chronic electricity shortages in 2011 and 2012, a subsequent shift to imported liquid fuel plunged Tanesco, the parastatal organisation responsible for electricity generation, transmission and distribution, into at least $350m of debt. Unrealistically low tariffs — even after price increases — and Tanesco’s poor payment record are big disincentives for potential suppliers of electricity.

The situation in Dar es Salaam, at least, may improve as a result of a 542km Chinese-built pipeline to bring natural gas from Mtwara in the south to the commercial capital. Construction began in 2015 and the $1.3bn pipeline will supply two gas-fired power stations, potentially doubling generation capacity to 3,000MW. The government has set an ambitious, some say unrealistic, target of raising generating capacity to 10,000MW and bring electricity to half the population by 2025.

As well as solving its domestic needs, Tanzania has enough offshore gas — about in proven reserves — to become a significant exporter. The country’s challenge is to conclude transparent and robust deals with foreign companies, including ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil and Ophir, and to avoid the resource curse that has plagued so many other African countries where rent seeking and commodity dependency have resulted.

So far negotiations have been slow and opaque. The appetite of foreign companies has cooled with falling gas prices. “I sense a lot of impatience among investors,” says one foreign diplomat, adding that foreign companies have spent some $3bn-$4bn on exploration with no sign of a return.

After four years of toing and froing, Tanzania’s centrepiece oil and gas legislation finally passed into law earlier this year. But red tape and mixed messages have tested the patience of international energy companies. Schlumberger and Halliburton, oil services companies, have scaled back operations. Separately, land set aside for a liquefied natural gas plant in the southern town of Lindi mysteriously found its way into private hands until Mr Magufuli personally intervened in January to clear the impasse.

“This is where this gentleman is different. He makes a quick decision,” says Abdulrahman Kinana, secretary-general of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party. “He said: ‘OK, give the land to [the energy companies]. They want to build a huge plant.’”

Mr Kinana says he expects natural gas investments of about $25bn over the next 10 years. “So we should take every step possible to help them invest.” Such sentiments aside, negotiations are unlikely to be concluded until 2019 at the very earliest, observers say.

One deal that Tanzania has clinched is the shipment of oil from Ugandan fields to the Indian Ocean via a 1,200km pipeline running from eastern Uganda to . Originally Uganda had agreed to export its through Kenya, but Total, the French petroleum company that is expected to finance the $4bn project, lobbied hard for the Tanzanian route, partly on security grounds.

Other parts of the infrastructure puzzle include upgrading the railway to Zambia and adding significantly to port capacity. China Merchants Group is planning to construct a , 75km north of Dar es Salaam. The new government’s exact intentions are uncertain, but the original plan envisaged a $10bn port that would be built in phases and could eventually reach a capacity 25 times that of the port at Dar es Salaam.

In the meantime, a new management team at Dar es Salaam port is trying to overcome its well-earned reputation for backlogs and corruption. A recent crackdown on “ghost” containers, which slip through without paying fees, has reduced traffic, but may set operations on a sounder footing in the medium term.

Hebel Mhanga, port manager, says Dar es Salaam will double capacity to 30m tonnes a year within two years with the help of a $600m World Bank loan.

Whatever the problems in the port itself, he insists that the real bottlenecks lie elsewhere. “The challenges are the inland transport infrastructure . . . outside the port and in the rest of the country,” he says. “Some require time to overcome. Power and inland transport are going to take years to improve.”

If Tanzania is to develop the infrastructure needed to unlock its domestic and regional potential then Mr Magufuli, the “Bulldozer” president, has his work cut out.

Kerosene and LPG are sold well below their cost of production. Currently, under-recoveries on kerosene and LPG are Rs 13.1 a litre and Rs 116 per cylinder, respectively.

By just about any measure, the movement to battle has grown so large that the truths of ’s now seem more mainstream than inconvenient.

In Paris in December, 195 nations . In the United States, . Pope Francis . Hundreds of thousands of people have come together for climate marches in Paris and New York, and demonstrators recently held fossil-fuel on six continents.

“That’s what I call momentum,” Daniel R. Tishman, the chairman of the board of the , said in its recent . “This isn’t just the wind at our backs; these are the winds of change.”

But the movement that started with a straightforward mission — to get more people to appreciate the dangers of climate change as a precursor to action — is feeling growing pains. What may seem like a unified front has pronounced schisms, with conflicting opinions on many issues, including nuclear power and , that are complicating what it means to be an environmentalist in this day and age.

The factional boundaries are not hard and fast, with groups shifting their positions as the science and waves of activism evolve. The environmental movement has always been a congregation of many voices, and some disagreement should be expected on such complex and intractable problems as saving the planet. Still, the tensions remain strong.

Consider some of the biggest points of contention:

Nuclear power

There are sharp disagreements over whether nuclear plants should be part of the energy mix to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Disasters like that at the have undercut confidence in the technology, but it remains attractive to and many in the environmental movement, including James E. Hansen, a retired NASA climate scientist.

Supporters argue that nuclear plants can produce enormous amounts of power without the carbon dioxide that burning coal and natural gas produce. They also point out that the energy sources replacing existing plants tend to come from natural gas, causing greenhouse emissions. That was the case in New England when the , and in California after the .

California has decided to by 2025, a lengthy transition that could allow a buildup of renewable energy sources to replace the lost power. The nuclear power debate extends to questions of whether to develop a new generation of plants that supporters say would be less expensive and safer, or whether to extend the lives of existing plants.

Opponents of argue that . , a Harvard historian who has written about the tactics of those who spread doubt about climate change, said proponents of nuclear power had not proved that the risks of operating the plants, and the waste they produce, could be managed.

“We all agree that there is urgency to this matter,” she said in an email interview. “So do we really want to bet the planet (literally) on a technology with such a bad track record? And that even when it works takes decades to build?”

She has called the pronuclear arguments from environmentalists “,” pointedly using a word associated with those who have disputed the validity of climate science itself.

Natural gas

Burning natural gas produces less carbon dioxide and smog-producing pollutants than burning coal, so such as the and even President Obama once praised it as a “bridge” to renewable fuels: that natural gas plants could replace coal plants until alternate sources like solar and wind power could take over.

More recently, however, the environmental effects of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which is used to extract fossil fuels, and growing worries about the greenhouse gas methane, which often leaks when natural gas is produced and transported, have led many scientists and activists to call natural gas a “.” (The Sierra Club now has a “” campaign.)

Climate campaigners like have argued that the potency of methane as a greenhouse gas, especially in the short term, might make it worse than coal. He calls this “” of warming, though others have his of the science.

Mr. McKibben has described those who favor natural gas as a way to reduce greenhouse emissions as believers in “, the equivalent of losing weight by cutting your hair.”

The fight has made its way into the Democratic campaign for the presidency: Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont called for a national , while Hillary Clinton has suggested that the technology should be carefully regulated and that, if natural gas is a bridge to alternate energy sources, “.” Those putting together the Democratic Party platform narrowly rejected the call for a ban.

Fossil-fuel companies

Two on the best strategy for dealing with companies like Exxon Mobil. One camp wants to attack their very existence, and to hurt their businesses and reputations as a way of accelerating the transition to renewable technologies like wind and solar.

Universities and institutional shareholders like pensions and church endowments are being pressed to sell their stock in fossil-fuel companies, to fight projects like the and to of fossil-fuel facilities.

This approach animates the “keep it in the ground” campaign led by groups like Mr. McKibben’s , which argues that many of today’s fuel reserves are “unburnable” if climate change is to be slowed, and so must be considered “stranded assets” — a notion that giants like and reject.

On the other side is the camp that wants to engage with the companies, particularly through shareholder proxies, to push for action on climate change.

Groups like the , as well as New York State and City officials, recently presented at Exxon Mobil’s annual shareholder meeting proposals that would require the company to assess the business risks of meeting the and to “acknowledge the moral imperative” to keep global temperatures from rising by more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since the start of the industrial era; they also helped to pass a resolution giving shareholders greater say in corporate governance.

Shareholder action has improved corporate responsibility on many fronts, said Sister Patricia Daly, a Dominican sister of Caldwell, N.J., who is the executive director of the Tri-State Coalition for Responsible Investment.

“Companies know the work we have put on their desk is beneficial,” she said in a recent interview, and cited the emergence of sustainability directors and efforts by many companies to reduce their emissions. “I’m confident we have really initiated that over the decades,” she said.

Insiders vs. outsiders

More fundamentally, a split is growing between the large, traditional environmental groups that try to work with companies and the scrappy campaigners who stand proudly outside.

, an author on environmental and economic issues, “a very deep denialism in the environmental movement among the big green groups,” like the , which has worked with fossil-fuel companies to research methane leaks and to pursue market-based solutions to the climate crisis, like putting a price on carbon.

Ms. Klein argues that capitalism inherently worsens climate change. Working within the system as the institutional players do, she has said, is “ in terms of how much ground we’ve lost.”

Mr. McKibben said the kind of noisy activism that characterizes the work of organizations like 350.org helps correct what he sees as the institutional inertia of the established groups. He said the lack of mass-movement activism was a key reason behind the to develop a system to limit and put a price on greenhouse gas emissions.

“If we’re going to win the climate fight, it will come with a change in the zeitgeist,” he said. “And that — not particular pieces of legislation — is the ultimate point of building movements.”

, the president of the , disagreed. Working with industry, he said, had helped deepen the understanding of such issues as methane leakage, which could produce remedies.

“More and more businesses want to be part of the solution,” Mr. Krupp said. Collaborative efforts helped lead to last month’s bipartisan passage of an overhaul of , he said, adding, “And we’re getting close to being able to do it with climate change.”

Given these fault lines on various issues, a question naturally arises: Are they hurting the overall environmental movement?

Even on that question, there are disagreements.

For , an expert in environmental communications at Northeastern University, there is a risk that differences of opinion within the movement could lead to greater enmity over time, resulting in a lack of focus. Progress could be lost, he said, “if they start to see each other as rivals and opponents, and they lose sight of broader climate goals and their true opponents.”

But many in the various factions of the movement say that there is more agreement than it may seem from afar.

Mr. Krupp said that although tactics and technologies may differ, consensus has emerged on many points.

“We have to keep most of the fossil fuels in the ground,” he said. “We all agree with that. The math dictates that. We all agree that the conversion to clean energy should be as quick as possible.” Of natural gas, he said, “it’s an , not a bridge.”

The movement to combat climate change is building an even bigger tent as more nations, businesses, religious groups and even conservatives have committed to dealing with the threat of rising seas and changing weather.

The number of in favor of climate action is growing, with the emergence of climate-oriented conservative groups like and the efforts of of dollars to support candidates willing to buck the party’s orthodoxy on climate change.

Ellen Dorsey, the executive director of the , which has promoted the divestment of fossil-fuel holdings and investment in cleaner technologies, has called disagreements within the green camp “noises around the margin.” She predicted that a combination of high-level collaboration and street-level activism would hold governments to their Paris climate pledges and push back against recalcitrant business interests.

Ultimately, Mr. Gore said in a recent telephone interview, economics may accomplish much of what governments have so far failed to do. Plunging costs of renewable energy make it more competitive than ever with fossil fuels. Similarly, the former vice president said, the biggest obstacle for nuclear power could be the expense of building new reactors.

“I don’t have a theological opposition to nuclear power,” he said. “It’s simply not cost competitive.”

Mr. Gore said that tensions among climate change activists follow the traditions of the civil rights movement, abolition, women’s suffrage and gay and lesbian rights. “In all such movements, there have been schisms, and minor splits as well,” he added. “It’s just a natural feature of the human condition.”

Cairn Energy, the UK-based oil explorer, is seeking $1bn in compensation from New Delhi after the Indian revenue department barred a sale of the group’s Indian assets because of a .

The compensation claim came as part of Cairn Energy’s filings in an international arbitration case relating to New Delhi’s demand that the group pay $1.6bn in tax.

This is one of several high-profile cases of multinational companies contesting demands from Indian officials for payment of retrospective tax.

Edinburgh-based Cairn Energy’s tax dispute has its origins in a 2006 restructuring of its Indian subsidiaries before the flotation of Cairn India, through which the group tapped its lucrative oil reserves in the state of Rajasthan.

then sold a majority stake in Cairn India to Vedanta Resources for $6.5bn in 2011.

In 2014, the Indian revenue department barred Cairn Energy from selling its residual 10 per cent stake in Cairn India, citing potential tax liabilities. The department issued the $1.6bn tax demand against Cairn Energy last year.

In the arbitration filing Cairn Energy said New Delhi’s January 2014 order stopping the sale of its stake in Cairn India violated India’s investment treaty with the UK, which is supposed to protect against expropriation of assets.

In levelling the $1.6bn tax demand on Cairn Energy, Indian officials cited a .

This was pushed through India’s parliament after the country’s supreme court ruled in favour of Vodafone in its long-running dispute with the revenue department over capital gains tax it tried to levy on the UK telecoms group’s $10.9bn acquisition of Indian mobile operator Hutchison Essar in 2007.

The 2012 law, which essentially overturned the supreme court’s Vodafone ruling, allowed for the reopening of tax investigations of corporate deals dating back to 1962.

In its claim to an international arbitration panel, which is expected to start hearing evidence next year, Cairn Energy seeks an order that India withdraw the $1.6bn tax demand, and provide the group with $1bn in compensation, plus accrued interest, for the financial losses it says it has suffered.

In the event the arbitrators do not make such an order, Cairn Energy is seeking compensation of $5.6bn, which is what it says it would cost the group to comply with the tax demand and cover its other losses.

Cairn Energy, which carries out high risk oil explorations in emerging markets, says it has been hard hit by its inability to sell the 10 per cent stake in Cairn India.

It says the inability to cash out forced it to scale back its global investment plans, and lay off about 40 per cent of its workforce.

When he came to power in May 2014, prime minister Narendra Modi pledged to eliminate what his government had described as the “tax terrorism” started by the previous government on businesses operating in India.

Mr Modi’s administration promised it would not levy any new retrospective tax demands under the controversial 2012 law, though it still remains on the books.

Saudi Arabia’s oil production rose close to record levels in June, as Opec forecast stronger demand for the group’s crude next year.

The kingdom, Opec’s largest oil producer and the world’s biggest exporter, increased output to almost 10.6m barrels a day last month, after keeping output largely steady since August.

Saudi Arabia normally pumps more crude to meet a seasonal surge in domestic demand during the summer months. However, its output is under particular scrutiny after promising Opec peers last month not to flood the market.

Traders and Opec rivals are watching Saudi production closely after oil minister sought to reassure the market at the Vienna Opec meeting the kingdom would not unleash its supplies and depress prices.

The Opec data, released on Tuesday, contains for the first time forecasts for the whole of next year. The numbers suggest the Saudi-led oil strategy shows signs of working.

In late 2014 Opec made a decision to sustain its output in the face of lower prices, putting pressure on rival producers of expensively produced oil. This helped extend the drop in crude prices.

The market is beginning to rebalance thanks to a drop in output from higher cost producers, which Opec claims will lift demand for the group’s crude in 2017. Saudi production rose to similar levels this time last year — a record for the kingdom.

Production in June jumped by 280,000 b/d from the prior month, according to data reported by the Saudi government to the Opec producers group.

Higher air-conditioning demand has traditionally boosted the volume of crude burnt directly in the kingdom’s power plants. Industry observers say domestic refining has also picked up.

The self-reported numbers are higher than estimates provided to Opec by secondary sources, such as oil analysts and consultants, who said produced 10.3m b/d in June.

Figures given to JODI, the oil database, by the kingdom show production hovered around 10.2m b/d for the last nine months. November and December saw a drop below this level.

Mr Falih, who is also chairman of the state’s energy giant Saudi Aramco, said after his appointment to minister in May the kingdom would maintain its oil policy of not cutting its production to benefit others.

“We have seen a decrease in supply by roughly one million barrels of crude oil per day,” Mr Falih told German business daily Handelsblatt this week, referring to output in the US and Canada.

“At the same time, demand has recovered, meaning that supply and demand are now more balanced again. But there are still excess stocks on the market,” he said.

Brent crude, which fell from $115 a barrel in June 2014 to below $30 earlier this year, has since . On Tuesday the international benchmark rose $1.46 a barrel to $47.70.

The sharp rise in Opec’s total June production — of more than 260,000 b/d to 32.9m b/d — according to secondary sources, affirms a continuation of the group’s strategy.

Alongside Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya and Nigeria accounted for much of the increase, according to these secondary estimates. Venezuela saw a decline in production.

Demand for crude from the 14 members of Opec, which now also includes new member Gabon, stands at 31.9m b/d on average for 2016. This is still below today’s production levels.

Should global demand increase at 2016’s pace next year — at 1.2m — to total 95.3m b/d, while production outside the group continues to fall, demand for the group’s crude is forecast to increase to almost 33m b/d.

“Market conditions will help remove overall excess oil stocks in 2017,” Opec said in its monthly report.

The crash in the value of sterling following Britain’s has boosted the fortunes of one of the country’s largest independent oil explorers.

said on Tuesday that its finances had improved by more than $100m as a result of the currency move following last month’s vote.

In the two and a half weeks since the referendum, nearly 13 per cent against the dollar to around $1.30. For companies like Premier, which spend in sterling, but receive revenues and report results in dollars, this has proved an immediate financial fillip.

“The exchange rate impact of Brexit has benefited us,” said Tony Durrant, Premier’s chief executive. “We have £500m of debt and letters of credit in sterling, which will now cost significantly less in dollars to repay.”

Mr Durrant said that the saving on capital spending on the Catcher project alone, its major development in the North Sea, was $100m.

Shares in the company rose 4.5 per cent to 72p on Tuesday as investors reacted both to the financial news and positive messages about the company’s production levels.

Premier said it had produced more oil than expected from some of its most important wells, especially from its North Sea operations. Both its Solan platform, west of the Shetland Islands, and the gas wells it bought from Eon, have performed above expectations, the company said.

“There are quite a lot of grounds for optimism on the production-side. We originally said we would produce 65,000-70,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day in the second half of the year. We now expect it to be at or above 70,000,” said Mr Durrant.

The company remains with its banks over refinancing its significant debt pile, which it said had stayed flat during the past three months — at $2.6bn of net debt. That is more than five times the $498m analysts expect it to make in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation this year.

Tests on Premier’s banking covenants have been from June to July while those talks continue, and Mr Durrant said he expected them to be extended for another one or two months.

Vendors will have to submit their bids online by July 25, according to the tender document. The contract for the supply of biodiesel shall be awarded on location-wise lowest net delivered cost basis.

Bansal said maximum tax on petrol is levied by Tamil Nadu state, which is about 35 per cent while Goa imposes lowest rate of tax on the commodity.

The total compensation sought is equal to the tax demand raised and the value of Cairn Energy’s 9.8 per cent shareholding in Cairn India.

Although many blockbuster mergers eventually end up in tatters, there are a few fleeting weeks or even months of shared, unreserved joy at the beginning for both buyer and seller.

The target company is thrilled to be paid a premium valuation. The buyer is pumped up about new markets and synergies. Achieving those aspirations will be hard work but there should be a sense of accomplishment and optimism over coming to an agreement.

Alas, little of this joint exhilaration could be found when and , the US energy pipeline titans, came together in a $33bn deal last September. It is perhaps karmic that the death of the deal — one of the most spectacular M&A implosions — was over a tax technicality decided in a at the end of June. The extraordinary complexity of the merger proved its downfall. Its untidy origins should have given pause to the companies and their technical experts. But it seems they were so obsessed with the craft of building a Frankenstein that they did not stop to consider whether the monster was a sensible idea.

The transaction shows how a public company can be sold over the objections of its chief executive. When the board of Williams approved its sale to ETE, not only was the vote contested (it passed just 8-5) but Alan Armstrong, the head of Williams, was a “nay”. In fact, when the board initially voted, a majority sided with Mr Armstrong against the deal. They appear to have changed their mind over a dinner — that chicken must have been spicy.

Williams had two activists on its board who were itching to dump Mr Armstrong, whom they believed had mismanaged the company. Other board members acknowledged they may have been dumped had a deal not been reached. The ETE deal also came with $6bn of cash and a stock swap that proved too tempting for a majority to dismiss.

Despite the rancour on the Williams side that day, the ETE side was jubilant. Kelcy Warren, its founder, had built a multibillion-dollar empire from a string of acquisitions and Williams was to be the final piece of the puzzle. ETE shares jumped by a third in the days after the news broke. But ETE’s anguish was coming.

Pipeline operators such as ETE and Williams think of themselves as toll collectors and had, at the time of the deal, mostly weathered the collapse in commodity prices. But, eventually, their fortunes sagged and a massive, debt-laden acquisition did not look so smart. By this point, tension had flared on the ETE side. Its since-deposed finance chief had Williams shareholders to vote down the deal. In the ensuing litigation, Williams accused ETE and its lawyers of slow-walking necessary regulatory filings to avoid closing before a mandated drop-dead date. The companies also disclosed that an initial $2bn annual synergy estimate had fallen to $150m.

Buyers with second thoughts have always tried to wiggle out of deals but M&A lawyers have, for the large part, made that difficult. Fortuitously for ETE, the Williams agreement also required tax lawyers.

Pipeline companies are strange brew of traditional corporations and partnerships that are not easily slapped together. For this reason — given the varied structures in the Williams-ETE deal and the cash, stock, dividends and assets changing hands — a third company was set up to facilitate exchanges between the two groups.

When the deal was announced, all the law firms said the sausage-making would be tax-free and the deal made that a closing condition. By April, ETE’s lawyer had a change of heart, giving Mr Warren an escape hatch.

, alleging that the changed tax opinion was a sham implemented at the behest of Mr Warren. The judge avoided the merits of the tax point and found that the decision of ETE’s lawyer was arrived at in good faith. Lacking the tax opinion, the deal was terminated at the end of June.

The ruling is being appealed and there is still logic to the deal. As one person close to the talks said: “Pipeline deals are all about maps. And the maps here still make sense”. Six Williams directors have just quit the board and both companies are reeling from the oil and gas bust. Yet they could, one day, join forces. At that point, one hopes the companies and their advisers, clever deal-structuring aside, will have a little more substantive enthusiasm.

sujeet.indap@ft.com

International investors warned they would shun Kazakhstan’s ambitious privatisation programme unless the government changes its attitude towards minority shareholders in the state oil company.

Their comments follow a battle for control of the UK-listed subsidiary of , the oil company that is 100 per cent owned by the Kazakh state. Last month NC KMG launched an attempt to tighten control over its UK subsidiary, KazMunaiGas Exploration Production, by offering to buy out minority shareholders at a price equivalent to the cash on its balance sheet.

KMG EP’s independent directors have pushed back, saying the changes would “severely undermine the corporate governance of the company” and that the of $7.88 per global depositary receipt “significantly undervalues the company”.

The tension between the state oil company and minority shareholders comes months after the Kazakh government approved a far-reaching privatisation plan, designed to attract international investors to the country and improve the competitiveness of Kazakh companies.

As part of the plan, Kazakhstan hopes to in some of its largest companies, including NC KMG.

However, KMG EP shareholders warned that the Kazakh government would struggle to attract investors to its privatisation deals if it did not heed their concerns over NC KMG’s proposals.

Ivan Mazalov, director at Prosperity Capital, one of the largest minority shareholders of KMG EP with a stake of about 2 per cent, described the proposals as “a fiasco”.

“NC KMG is the largest state-controlled company and their treatment of minority shareholders so far has not contributed to a feeling they will be treated fairly,” he told the Financial Times.

Jacob Grapengiesser, partner at East Capital, one of the top funds specialising in the former Soviet Union, described the offer price as “outrageously low”.

“This is a litmus test for Kazakhstan’s relationship with minority investors,” he said. “If they fail here there is no way we will look at other assets being privatised.”

Michel Danechi, managing director at Duet Asset Management, said he believed the company was worth “at least 50 per cent more” than NC KMG’s offer. “To treat minorities like this would substantially reduce [NC KMG’s] chance of coming to the market,” he added.

Executives of the state oil company last week met minority investors in London in an attempt to persuade them of the benefits of the proposals, which NC KMG says are designed to improve efficiency of its subsidiary. The proposals will be put to an extraordinary general meeting on August 3, and will require approval by a majority of the minority investors.

China’s sovereign wealth fund, CIC, will have a key role in the vote as it holds an 11 per cent stake in KMG EP — around a third of the total held by minorities. The Chinese group has not yet indicated its views on NC KMG’s proposals.

NC KMG offered to buy out minority shareholders in KMG EP in 2014, but ran into strong resistance from the latter’s independent directors over the price of the deal, and later withdrew its bid as oil prices tumbled.

This compares 70 Bcfe of proved reserves for Niko’s 10 per cent share stated in the financial statement for the previous fiscal ended March 31, 2015.

Falling spot LNG prices have boosted consumption of the fuel in India and triggered demand for LNG infrastructure in countries long shut out of the gas trade.

Traders can be caught out by waxing and waning correlations.

Take oil. For much of the year the US stock market has maintained a fairly tight — intraday — relationship with the price of crude as the fortunes of energy companies were used as a risk appetite proxy.

But the finished last week near record highs having surged at a time when West Texas Intermediate crude, the US benchmark, dribbled back to two-month lows after relinquishing the $50 a barrel level.

The S&P 500/WTI 20-day correlation was minus 11 mid-session on Monday, down from positive 85 a month ago, according to Reuters calculations.

If equity investors think that tight positive relationship will return then they should be wary about signals from the energy sector right now.

Reuters also calculates that hedge funds have cut the number of bullish bets on US oil prices to the lowest level in nearly four months.

Speculators appear concerned that the rebound in prices off February’s 12-year low around $26 a barrel has encouraged some marginal US producers to reboot output.

Data released at the end of last week showed US drillers added oil rigs for a fifth week out of the last six.

Stockpiles remain high as meek global demand fails to cause much of a drawdown.

WTI fell nearly 5 per cent last Thursday after US inventories fell by less than forecast.

Can the stock market’s bullish run survive another oil price relapse?

India has a capacity to refine 230 million tonne (mt) a year. Singh said this will rise to 300 mt by 2030 based on expansion of existing facilities.

So far rigs that have been lying idle continuously for three years or more were not eligible to bid for ONGC jobs due to safety concerns.

In his State of the Union address in January 2006, President George W Bush warned of the dangers of being “, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world”. Ten years on, the world is showing how hard it is to break that habit.

The head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, pointed out last week that the share of the world’s oil supplies coming from the Middle East had risen to its highest since the 1970s, and was likely to .

His comments were a salutary reminder of a weakness that is too easily forgotten at a time when crude is cheap: the world is still vulnerable to an oil supply shock.

Among the large consuming countries, the US has had the most success in reducing its reliance on imported oil. The policies promoted by Mr Bush, including mandates for biofuels and tighter vehicle fuel efficiency standards, had some effect, but the bigger factors have been the slow recovery from the recession of 2007-09, and the shale oil production boom of the past six years. Net petroleum imports dropped from 12.5m barrels a day in 2005 to 4.7m b/d last year.

That still leaves America as a significant importer though, and with US falling and consumption rising, the decline in imports appears to have come to end for the time being.

Other developed countries have cut their oil consumption through higher efficiency and weaker growth, but remain largely import-dependent. Meanwhile the large emerging economies have become more thirsty for Middle Eastern oil. China’s oil consumption grew by 73 per cent during 2005-15, and the proportion covered by domestic production dropped from 53 per cent to 36 per cent. India’s oil consumption grew 60 per cent over the same period, and its own production dropped from 28 per cent to 21 per cent of that.

For oil importers, the upside of the price collapse of the past two years is that it has boosted their spending power. The downside is that consumers and businesses have been encouraged to make investment decisions that lock in demand. Sales of gas-guzzling SUVs have been booming in both the US and China.

The more the world becomes accustomed to the idea that oil prices will stay low, the worse the pain will be if they rise sharply. The volatility of the Middle East, and other producers such as Venezuela, means that a sudden disruption to supplies is always a risk.

If oil markets because of steady growth in demand and erosion of inventories, then the US shale industry can be expected to respond with increased activity and production that will hold prices down.

But the US is not a “swing producer” in the sense that it can react within weeks to a supply shock. Deploying the capital, equipment and workers needed to raise US output will take time. As the 1970s showed, plenty of damage can be done by even a temporary spike in prices.

One answer for consuming countries is that they need to lean against the wind, using fuel taxes, efficiency standards and support for electric vehicles to discourage short-sighted responses to oil prices that may be only temporarily low. Subsidies for oil consumption should be cut wherever politics allow it.

There is only so much that those efforts can achieve, however. Oil consumers also need to recognise that they are tied in a codependent relationship with the Middle East and are likely to remain so for decades to come. With an addiction that is this difficult to kick, it is important to make sure it is carefully managed.

The offer of stake in JSC Yamal LNG was made when Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan visited St. Petersburg last month, sources privy to the development said.

Speaking to analysts in New York in March, John Watson promised a change of strategic direction for .

Since before he took over as chairman and chief executive in 2010, the company had been working through a wave of large projects such as , the liquefied natural gas plant in Australia that lived up to its monstrous name by coming into production two years late and $17bn over its original $37bn budget.

Chevron’s capital spending had soared to a peak of just under $42bn in 2013, and its return on capital was falling steadily even before the collapse of 2014. 

Mr Watson said that from now on that would change. would spend less of its money on those grandiose plans, he said, and more on smaller, more humdrum projects that would be quicker to bring into production.

There was one big exception to that new policy: the costly expansion of the in Kazakhstan, run by a consortium in which Chevron has a 50 per cent stake.

This week the consortium confirmed that it was going ahead with a $36.8bn investment to raise production at the field by 260,000 barrels of crude per day. It is the largest oil and gas project to be given the go-ahead by private sector companies this decade.

Tengiz is a particularly valuable asset, however, and Chevron’s overall strategy of focusing on improving shorter-term returns remains in place.

At a time when Chevron, like the rest of the industry, is under financial strain, is taking the unsentimental approach to improving its performance that you would expect from his background.

Tall, silver-haired and bespectacled, the 59-year-old Mr Watson looks more like a doctor or a lawyer than an oilman, and he rose up through the company on the finance rather than the engineering side.

Unlike some of his peers, he was never an engineer or geologist out in the field, and he is not prone to waxing lyrically about the romance of the industry.

As one former colleague puts it: “John is a very smart analytical data-driven type of guy who doesn’t flap.”

The words “very smart” come up often when you ask about Mr Watson. Raised in California, he studied agricultural economics at the University of California, Davis, and then quickly went on to an MBA at the University of Chicago. When he graduated there in 1980 he immediately joined Chevron as a financial analyst.

From a long way back he was groomed to be the chief executive, according to Robin West of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The key moment in Mr Watson’s career came in 1998, when he was appointed vice-president with strategic responsibility for mergers and acquisitions, just as the mega-merger wave was hitting the oil industry. 

As Exxon paired with Mobil, Chevron failed to agree a merger with Texaco in 1999, but succeeded in its second attempt a year later, and Mr Watson was put in charge of the integration effort. He then became chief financial officer, and was successful in achieving cost savings from the merger.

That deal and the subsequent $17bn Unocal acquisition in 2005 “turned out to be much better than most people understood at the time”, says Mr West.

Today, with Chevron’s credit rating deteriorating as it borrows to pay its dividends, there is a greater challenge ahead in terms of cutting costs and raising profitability. But Mr Watson’s record suggests he is exactly the type of executive investors would want to take on that task.

Alaska Gov. Bill Walker has fired opening shots in what may become a messy legal battle with the state attempting to take ownership of natural gas in the Prudhoe Bay field, presumably for a state-led gas pipeline project the governor is now promoting.
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