Mumbai: Mukesh Ambani-promoted Reliance Industries is scouting for new energy assets in the US, including some owned by exploration and production company East Resources, sources told FE. RIL could pick up energy assets including shale gas worth $1 billion (around Rs 4,700 crore) and an announcement to this effect is expected to be made in the first half of this fiscal.

East Resources which Royal Dutch Shell bought for $4.7 billion last month owns more than 1.25 million acres of land holdings in the US. The company owns and operates more than 2,500 producing oil and gas wells in New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Colorado and is actively exploring drilling programmes in Wyoming. The company also owns 6,50,000 net acres of Marcellus Shale rights in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York.

The move is part of RILs bid to tap the growing world market for non-conventional energy. In April, RIL had acquired 40% in Pennsylvanias Atlas Energy, and plans to invest $1.7 billion (around Rs 7,500 crore) in its core Marcellus Shale acreage position. Shale gas is a natural gas produced from shale, a fine-grained sedimentary rock.

Shale gas is becoming an increasingly important source of natural gas across the globe. Over the next decade, shale gas is expected to contribute to over 20% of overall gas production in the US.

Acquisition of hydrocarbon assets will enable RIL to cater to the US market, which, despite all the turmoil it has gone through, is still the largest, said Sanket Singh, an analyst with Frost & Sullivan. The 2006 deal with Chevron, where the US company picked up 5% in Reliance Petroleum, was done with this in mind, he added. However, Chevron exited RPL last April, as US oil demand fell and margins of refiners there dipped. Singh said that non-conventional energy will attract a lot of investment, although there are certain environmental hurdles that could crop up, like the use of large quantities of water for such projects.

Analysts said that funding large acquisitions should not be difficult for RIL, which is sitting on large cash resources. The company had cash and cash equivalents of Rs 15,960 crore as of December 31, 2009, and raised about Rs 9,240 crore by selling treasury stocks in three tranches since September last year.

RIL has been looking for acquisitions in the petrochemicals segment as well. The company made a $14.5-billion bid for troubled Dutch petrochemicals…