Cairn India has tied up $1.6 billion (Rs 7,450 crore), including Rs 4,000 crore from the State Bank of India, for funding its Rajasthan development activities. Cairn, which expects to invest around $1-1.3 billion in the Rajasthan oil block, will also use the 6-year loan to repay its existing debt of around $850 million.
Besides SBI, it will receive around $500 million from UK's Standard Chartered Bank another $250 million from the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC). The resource base has continually grown since the discovery of Mangala in 2004 and the focus in the coming years will be to realise the full potential of the Barmer basin.
The Mangala, Bhagyam and Aishwariya fields together with their Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) potential are being developed in sequence. The company seems to have chosen a deliberate strategy to source half of its fund requirements from India while sourcing the other in foreign currency.
Cairn has already invested around $2 billion since oil was first struck in Rajasthan in 2004, shortly after it acquired a 70% stake in the block from Shell.crackcrack
