Billionaire Anil Agarwal's Vedanta Ltd on March 25 said it will invest $1.5 billion across its oil and gas, zinc and steel businesses. The board on March 25 approved $687-million capital spending for drilling of new wells at the firm's oil and gas unit, Cairn Oil & Gas, Vedanta said in a stock exchange filing.

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It also approved a $466-million phase 2 expansion of the Gamsberg zinc project in South Africa and another $348 million for steel expansion. The $687 million "capex investment is towards infill wells, development and exploration. The strategic priority for the Cairn Oil & Gas business is to increase near-term volume through infill wells and add resources through exploration," the filing said.

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It said $360 million has been earmarked for infill wells in the prolific fields like Mangala, Bhagyam, Aishwariya, Aishwariya Barmer Hill (all in Rajasthan block) and Ravva in eastern offshore. "The exploration work programme with capex investment of USD 327 million shall be spread across the OALP blocks and PSC blocks including pilot wells for shale," it said.

The company had bid and got some blocks for exploration of oil and gas under the Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) over the last few years. The Gamsberg Phase II Expansion Project, at a cost of $466 million, will double up capacity to eight million tonnes per annum to produce additional 200,000 tonnes a year MiC Zinc. "This project will bring significant socio-economic benefit and will make Vedanta Zinc International as largest zinc producer of South Africa." Vedanta said it will invest $348 million in a three million tonne project of its subsidiary ESL Steel Ltd.

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"The steel expansion project with an investment of USD 348 million comes with additional blast furnace supported coke ovens, pellet plant, oxygen plant and other auxiliaries and infrastructure upgradation including railway siding to plant head," it said.

"This project also comes with a new 0.18 million tonnes Ductile Iron Pipe Plant which will help us to maximize VAP." This project, along with debottlenecking, will increase capacity to three million tonnes per annum with "the lowest quartile cost & premium product portfolio," it added.