From James Bond to Govinda, Rahul Dhir's love for movies is incessant. So is his determination to cut through adversity and make oil from sand
It was the biggest oil find in India in more than two decades. Cairn plc had succeeded where the giant multinational, Shell, had failed. The 2004 oil find in Rajasthan state’s Barmer district not only changed Cairn’s fortunes forever on the London Stock Exchange, it also made the company a darling of the Indian government. The then oil minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar, even asked the state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) to take lessons from the smaller, nimbler company.
Dhir hasn’t hesitated to take on the government on crucial issues. The biggest such call was to do with the taking the crude oil out of Rajasthan. The government had originally agreed to buy crude from Cairn in the state. The plan changed midway and Dhir found himself stranded in the desert with the oil. The market, or access to the nearest port, was 700 kilometres away in Gujarat. When Cairn proposed a heated (expensive) pipeline to take it to Gujarat, “No one was willing to fund it,” says Dhir. He had to struggle with the mandarins in Delhi for a year so that the cost of the pipeline was included in the project. The pipeline finally got the green signal late last year. Delays have cost the company a packet. But work has begun and the pipeline will be complete next year, he says.
(This story appears in the 08 January, 2010 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)