ONGC

India's largest oil  explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp's follow-on share sale, valued at around $2.5 billion, or Rs 12,000 crore,  and delayed by more than six months, is likely to be launched on September 20 and will close on Sept 23, sources said on Monday.The government owns 74.14 percent of the state-run ONGC and has said it plans to sell a 5 percent stake in the offering. The FPO is essentially an offer to the public to share more of the subsidy burden of the government – allowing the government to lose less on this count.[caption id="attachment_76326" align="alignleft" width="380" caption="Reuters"][/caption]The sale is part of broader proposal to raise about $9 billion through share sales in public sector firms to help plug the government's fiscal gap and generate funds for schemes for the poor.The government had in January appointed Citigroup, Nomura Holdings, Bank of America Corp, HSBC Holdings, JM Financial Services and Morgan Stanley to manage ONGC’s share sale.Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited is mainly engaged in the oil exploration and production activities. It has two segments: exploration and production, refining.During the fiscal year ended March 31, 2010 (fiscal 2010), the Company had a crude oil production of 32.95 million metric tons and natural gas production of 27.98 million metric tons. As of March 31, 2010, the Company operates more than 22,000 kilometers of pipelines in India, including nearly 4,500 kilometers of sub-sea pipelines.Its subsidiaries include ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL), ONGC Nile Ganga BV (ONGBV), ONGC Nile Ganga (Cyprus) Ltd., Jarpeno Limited, Imperial Energy Tomsk Limited, San Agio Investments Limited and Imperial Energy (Cyprus) Limited.