ONGC’s overseas arm, ONGC Videsh Ltd, on Monday agreed to buy US energy major ConocoPhillips’ 8.4 per cent stake in Kazakhstan’s Kasha-gan oil fields for around $5 billion. It will be the biggest acquisition by an Indian company this year and will rank as the sixth largest in the country’s history.
Kashagan is considered the world’s biggest oil field discovery since 1968 and is said to hold an estimated 30 billion barrels of oil-in-place, of which 8 billion to 12 billion barrels are potentially recoverable.