Russia is offering India a 1% stake in its state-owned oil company Rosneft, AFX has cited India's Financial Express as reporting. The stake is worth $1 billion.
India’s Financial Express is reported to have said that India is thinking about asking a consortium led by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation’s (ONGC) overseas investment unit, ONGC Videsh, to purchase the stake that is being offered by Russia.
According to AFX, ONGC considered acquiring a 5% stake in Rosneft for $3 billion during an initial public offering of the state-owned company’s shares in 2006. However, the company later decided against this move.
Rosneft and ONGC are already partners in a number of projects, which would appear to make India’s participation in Rosneft a strategic move. For example, OMGC already owns a 20% stake in Russia’s Sakhalin-1 project.
AFX International said that the companies also signed an agreement in early 2007 to jointly bid to acquire oil exploration and refining projects in Russia and India, as well as several other countries.
According to the Budapest Business Journal, India’s Financial Express cited an informed source as saying: This is the outcome of the ongoing diplomatic moves between the two countries.