India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp plans to plough back revenues from Sokol crude sales for the development of the Sakhalin-1 oil field, ONGC Videsh managing director R.S. Butola said on Saturday.
India imports more than 70 percent of the oil it consumes, and its state-run firms are investing heavily in overseas oil assets to get a steady supply. ONGC, the biggest investor overseas among Indian state-run oil firms, owns 20 percent in Sakhalin.
"We are making more investment out of our revenues to produce more oil from Sakhalin-1 oil fields," Butola told reporters at a function to mark arrival of first shipment of Sakhalin oil. The percentage of revenue to be reinvested for Sakhalin-I development depends on global crude oil prices, he said. ONGC aims to bring a million barrels of crude and oil equivalent gas per day from the Russian oil field.
An ONGC subsidiary, Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd, on Friday received the first crude cargo of a similar size from Russia's Sakhalin field. On Friday, Butola told reporters ONGC will bring its second Sokol crude cargo of 700,000 barrels from Sakhalin by the end of December.
ONGC, Russia's Rosneft and Japanese consortium Sodeco hold stakes in the Exxon Mobil-led Sakhalin-1 oil field. The field contains an estimated 2.23 billion barrels of oil and 17.1 trillion cubic feet of gas. Sakhalin-1 is due to pump 250,000 barrels per day (bpd) by the end of this or early next year.