It's always fun when BRICs invest in other BRICs. Today India's state-owned energy firm ONGC has been cleared by Russia's anti-monopoly service for a $2.6 billion takeover Imperial Energy. It will be interesting to see if this state-owned company will face the same inhospitable treatment of so many other private sector energy firms, or whether it will be a "preferential" relationship. Likely the former: India's biggest oil producer agreed the takeover of Imperial in late August. The deal marks ONGC's second investment in Russia, where the company already has a 20 percent stake in the Sakhalin-1 oil and gas consortium headed by U.S. major Exxon. State-owned ONGC beat China's Sinopec to snatch the oil explorer, whose assets are mainly in the Tomsk region of Siberia. Industry sources close to the deal have said the Kremlin would likely expect ONGC to sell a stake on to a Russian state oil ...

Did you know that the Indian government imposes a cess on indigenously produced crude oil? The Oil Industry Development Act, 1974 based on which the cess is being charged, states that “the cess collected under this provision would be made available to the development of petroleum sector”. The cess was introduced to provide financial assistance to state-owned oil companies, and is not applicable to private oil producers.

Since then, the government has collected Rs.74972.36 crore as cess, but only Rs.902

...