OVL sells crude to China for $25.01 mn

ONGC Videsh Ltd, the overseas arm of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, has sold one million barrels of crude oil out of its share from a Sudan oil project to China for over $25 million, Minister of State for Petroleum & Natural Gas Sumitra Mahajan told Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.

"ONGC-Nile Ganga BV, the wholly-owned subsidiary of OVL, has sold one million barrels of crude oil out of its share from the Greater Nile Oil Project in Sudan to China. The company has received a revenue of $25.01 million (Rs 117.55 crore) out of this sale," she said in a written reply.

OVL had earlier this year bought out Canadian Talisman Energy's 25 per cent stake in the 260,000 barrels a day Sudan project for $720 million. OVL's share in the producing oil field is over 3 million tonnes of crude oil annually.

"OVL can sell its share of crude oil from the Sudan project in the Far East Asian countries like China and Japan and in the Mediterranean market. The profit that accrues from such sales would depend on the world oil prices prevailing at the time of sale," she said.

Besides crude sales to China, the company has shipped 2.4 million barrels of oil for processing at ONGC's subsidiary Mangalore Refineries and Petrochemicals Ltd, Mahajan said.

In 2003-04, the company plans to bring about 1.6 million tonnes of crude oil from its share of oil produced from the Sudan project, for processing at MRPL and would sell the remaining in the international market.