OREANDA-NEWS. April 11, 2011. The country's biggest energy explorer, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), is expected to hit the market with its Rs 12,000-crore follow-on public offer in June, a finance ministry official said.

The share sale was originally planned for March, but was delayed as the company did not meet the Securities and Exchange Board of India's listing norm of having an equal number of functional and independent directors on its board. "The oil ministry has indicated that the issue (of independent directors) will be resolved soon," the finance ministry official said. "We are hopeful of bringing out ONGC issue around last week of June." Disinvestment secretary Sumit Bose also told ET that the ONGC issue was scheduled for the first quarter of 2011-12.

"We will have (the share sale of ) Power Finance first, followed by Sail or ONGC," he said without specifying the timeline. "We are also aiming to bring out the public issue of Hindustan Copper within the first quarter of FY 12, as we have cabinet approval for all these four companies."

The ONGC issue is supposed to be the biggest among all of them and fetch the government close to a third of its Rs 40,000-crore disinvestment target. The government aims to sell 5% of its stake in ONGC. It currently owns 74.14% of the company.

With the recent improvement in stock market sentiment and a rally in crude oil price, the government considers the time opportune for the ONGC issue.The government planned to launch its disinvestment process in 2011-12 with the ONGC issue, but had to defer the proposed sale as the state-run company's board lacked the requisite strength of independent directors.

According to the department of public enterprises, the ONGC board is short of five independent directors. "They have shortlisted some candidates," the official said. "We are pushing for early appointments." At present, ONGC has five functional directors against the sanctioned strength of seven.

As per reports, the oil ministry has shortlisted RBI deputy governor Usha Thorat, former finance secretary Arun Ramanathan and former vice-chancellor of Delhi University Deepak Nayyar for appointment as independent directors on the ONGC board.