India’s ONGC sees sharp rise in equity oil in Sudan

NEW DELHI, Sept 29 (Reuters) – India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp expects its share of equity oil in Sudan to rise to 200,000 barrels a day by 2009 from 60,000 bpd, the head of the company’s overseas arm, ONGC Videsh Ltd, said on Monday.

ONGC gets 60,000 bpd from its 25 percent stake it bought from Canada’s Talisman Energy in the Greater Nile project.

Recently it acquired equity in two more Sudanese properties, blocks 5A and 5B, from Austrian oil and gas group OMV . The contracts take effect from January 1.

“Our share from Sudan will rise to 10 million tonnes a year by 2008/09. Greater Nile’s output will rise and I am very very optimistic about 5A and 5B,” Atul Chandra told Reuters on the sidelines of a news conference.

State-run ONGC is aggressively seeking equity oil abroad as domestic output is declining in India, which imports 70 percent of its crude oil requirement.

ONGC moved into Sudan when Western oil companies were selling stakes because of criticism from human rights groups that their investment in Sudan helped fund the government’s civil war effort in the 20-year conflict that has killed two million people.

“We need oil and we had to take an exploration risk or a political risk,” Chandra said.

“Now it is very positive,” he said, referring to the peace talks in Sudan.

He said ONGC was also involved in a project to build a pipeline in Sudan, which would further strengthen its presence in the country.