Shell may buy majority stake in Fourth Partner
NEWDELHI: Royal Dutch Shell Plc, the world’s second-biggest publicly traded oil company, plans to acquire a majority stake in Hyderabad-based rooftop solar firm Fourth Partner Energy, two people aware of the development said.
Shell is looking to buy a “significant stake” in Fourth Partner Energy, said one of the two people cited above, requesting anonymity. The second person said Shell is looking to acquire a majority in the firm.
Shell’s interest in Fourth Partner Energy comes amid the central government’s ambitious plans to set up 175 gigawatt (GW) of clean energy capacity by 2022. Of this, 40GW is to come from rooftop solar projects.
The Anglo-Dutch company runs a liquefied natural gas terminal at Hazira on India’s west coast and is the operator of the Panna-Mukta-Tapti fields, in a joint venture with state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp. and Reliance Industries Ltd. It is among the few foreign oil companies to have a fuel retail licence in the country.
In one of the largest overseas investments in the Indian rooftop solar space, Warburg Pincus agreed to invest as much as $100 million in CleanMax Solar in July last year. In 2015, infrastructure investment manager I Squared Capital, announced its $150 million investment in Amplus Energy.
While queries emailed to Fourth Partner Energy’s founders Saif Dhorajiwala and Vivek Subramanian remained unanswered, Aditya Gupta, senior manager, business development, at the firm in an emailed response said, “We regret that we do not have any news to share with you in this regard.”