India is ready to spend up to 25 billion dollars on overseas oil and gas ventures to meet spiralling demand, Oil Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar said Wednesday. "We are in a position to raise 25 billion dollars to invest in acquiring oil and gas properties abroad," the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency quoted Aiyar as telling a meeting of industrialists. India's state-owned oil firms already have stakes in oil and gas fields in Russia, Sudan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Qatar, Ivory Coast, Australia, Vietnam and Myanmar, but lag far behind Chinese companies, PTI said.
Aiyar said India, Asia's fourth largest economy, and China would continue to be dictated to by market forces and compete in some areas but there were also possibilities for working together.
"My ambition is not to compete with China but to explore ways and means of partnering with it," he said. "There are enormous prospects for India and China to work together... our interests are complementary."
India buys nearly 70 percent of its annual requirement from the global market. With its economy growing at around seven percent, its reliance on imported crude is expected to grow to around 85 percent in the next 20 years.
State-run Oil India Limited (OIL) meanwhile Wednesday announced it had won the rights to prospect for crude in a field in Libya.
Senior OIL officials signed an agreement with Libya's National Oil Company in Tripoli on Tuesday, OIL spokesman Prasanata Barkakaty said in Guwahati in Assam state.
"I would say this is a landmark agreement as this is the first time that OIL is going to be an independent operator in exploring for crude oil overseas," Barkakaty said.
OIL won the contract after outbidding some 56 international companies.
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