OREANDA-NEWS. Essar Oil Ltd, a fully integrated oil & gas company of international scale with strong presence across the hydrocarbon value chain, announced the appointment of Mr. Amitabh Bhargava, as the chief financial officer of its E&P division. With Essar Oil’s E&P business reaching scale and on the verge of beginning commercial production, a dedicated CFO for the division will bring sharper focus on efficient resource management.

"We welcome Amitabh Bhargava to the Essar Oil family. His rich experience of 20 years, especially in the infrastructure sector, will benefit Essar Oil in driving the exploration and production segment, which is on the cusp of take off," said Mr. Iftikhar Nasir, CEO – E&P, Essar Energy. Essar Oil is a subsidiary of LSE-listed Essar Energy.

Prior to this, Mr. Bhargava, a graduate in chemical engineering from Institute of Technology - Banaras Hindu University and a management graduate from S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai, was the Managing Director of Nomura India Infrastructure Fund.

Mr. Amitabh Bhargava has over 20 years of experience with expertise in private equity, project finance, structured finance and project advisory in the Infrastructure sector. In his earlier assignments, Mr. Bhargava had worked with reputed organizations like GMR Infrastructure, RREEF Infrastructure (Deutsche Bank), Macquarie Capital Advisors, ICICI Venture and ICICI Bank. He has also worked with GAIL India in the area of Project Management and Operations.

Essar Oil is a leader in India’s non-conventional E&P space with reserves and resources of 1.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent (bboe) across its blocks. At its flagship Raniganj CBM block, development of which has put on the fast track, the company has completed drilling 120 wells with current gas production of around 55,000 standard cubic metres per day (scm/d). This is stated to rise to 3 million scm/d by the end of next fiscal.

Essar Oil is a fully integrated oil & gas company of international scale with strong presence across the hydrocarbon value chain from exploration & production to refining and oil retail. It has a global portfolio of onshore and offshore oil & gas blocks, with about 2.1 billion barrels of oil equivalent in reserves & resources. Essar Oil now has 405,000 bpsd (barrels per stream-day) of crude refining capacity. There are more than 1,600 Essar-branded oil retail outlets in various parts of India.