Cairn Energy changes its name to Capricorn Energy

New Delhi: Britain oil and gas explorer Cairn Energy PLC will change its company name to Capricorn Energy PLC from mid-December, around the time its over USD 1 billion retrospective tax dispute will be nearing closure.

Cairn Energy, which gave India its biggest onland oil discovery, had in 2011 sold the India unit, Cairn India to mining baron Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Group. The sale included the transfer of the Cairn brand name to Vedanta.

But both the UK firms and Vedanta kept using the name – while Cairn Energy did not change its name all this while, the mining group continued with Cairn India Ltd till 2018 when the firm was merged with Mumbai-listed Vedanta Ltd. Since then, the oil and gas exploration and production operations of Vedanta Ltd are organised as Cairn Oil & Gas.
In a statement, Cairn Energy PLC said it “plans to change its company name from Cairn Energy PLC to Capricorn Energy PLC, effective from December 31, 2021. The LSE stock ticker will remain as CNE.”

This, it said, follows an agreement at the time of the Cairn India IPO in 2006 that the name would ultimately be changed.

After the name change, the Cairn brand exclusively vests with Vedanta. “Given the recent legislative change in India and our participation in the related tax refund process, we are now putting in place the planned name change,” it added.

On November 3, the company had stated that it has agreed to drop all litigations against the Indian government in exchange for a Rs 7,900 crore refund of taxes claimed retrospectively.