Govt clears ONGC's Venezuela investment: Rediff.com Business

• Govt clears ONGC's Venezuela investment: Rediff.com Businesstags: no_ta

  • The government on Friday gave Oil and Natural Gas Corp and partners approval to invest $2.181 billion in a giant oilfield in Venezuela that will give energy deficient India 3.6 million tonnes a year of crude oil.

    ONGC [ Get Quote ] Videsh [ Images ], the overseas arm of the state explorer, will invest $1.333 billion between 2010 and 2015 as its share of spending in the 400,000 barrels per day 'Carabobo-1' project. Indian Oil [ Get Quote ] Corp and Oil India will invest $454 million each in the project.

    The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the investment by Indian firms who together hold 18 per cent stake in the Carabobo-1 project, Home Minister P Chidambaram [ Images ] said after the CCEA meeting here.

    The Carabobo-1 project of the Orinoco extra-heavy oil belt of Venezuela would involve a total investment of close to $21 billion over 25 years. The three firms have for the time sought the government's approval for investing $2.18 billion and may be able to fund most of the future investment from the revenues they will start earning when the project goes on-stream in three years.

    Last month, the three won rights to develop Carabobo-1 project along with Spain's Repsol-YPF and Petronas of Malaysia after committing themselves to pay a signing amount of $1.05 billion and an equivalent to Venezuela's state-run PdV in loan....

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