India's biggest company by market value Reliance Industries Ltd is considering buying a stake in shale gas assets in U.S. owned by Pioneer Natural Resources, media reports said.
The company will buy a 45 percent stake in the Eagle Ford shale gas field in south Texas, the newspaper report said, which will be the second deal of its kind in recent months for Reliance.
In April, Reliance's energy-based conglomerate had agreed to pay $1.7 billion to Atlas Energy to form a joint venture and own a 40 percent stake in Atlas' Marcellus Shale operations in the eastern United States.
Irving, Texas-based Pioneer, which has about 310,000 acres at the Eagle Ford shale play, said last month it expects to announce a joint venture to accelerate its Eagle Ford Shale development by the end of this quarter.Reliance is joining Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp. in buying unconventional gas reserves expecting a recovery in prices for the cleaner-burning fuel.
Unconventional gas is the fuel trapped in shale formations, coal beds and impermeable sandstone rock. Houston billionaire George P Mitchell pioneered new extraction techniques in the 1990s and turned shale-gas deposits attractive.
Source: IB Times