India being the fourth-largest oil importer globally with about 80 percent importing of its crude needs and is continuously exploring for oil and gas assets across the world to meet the growing demand and to feed its expanding refining capacity. Although the Oil & Natural Gas Corp's (ONGC) output is on the rise in the recent past weeks the output came to a halt as there was a mile-long spill from a pipeline off Mumbai’s coast and had struck shale gas at one of its block in West Bengal.

In a major move to revamp share policies of ONGC, the government is set to offer 5% stake of its equity, in the light of sharp jump in quarterly profit, with a provisional dividend of Rs. 32 per share and planning to issue 1:1 bonus shares which is likely to be launched in March.

With the net profit boosting every quarter owing to one time past dues disbursement of `1,987 crore from the government, despite rising subsidy burden, this plan has come up in the interest of investors.

Alongside the company’s operational performance was much similar to the last year with net profit of 132% (at Rs. 7,803 crore) more in the third quarter alone with additional dues recovery of 1,900 crore from natural gas customers.

The ONGC Chairman R S Sharma emphasized that with clear subsidy policy, it is important for investors in the follow-on public offer and as ONGC would have to help state oil marketing companies, such as IOC, BPCL and HPCL, who sell petroleum products below cost at government-determined rates.

Also ONGC made five discoveries, including Cauvery onland block Pundi, western offshore C-series block, western onshore basin block Karjan Extn-II and western offshore Kutch block-I, and the upstream regulator has been instructed about the findings. As its expansion policy now ONGC is set to take a combined advantage from these discoveries and future profitability from the subsidy policy.