IOC-led consortium buys 24% stake in Russia's Vankor oil field for $2.1 bn

New Delhi: A consortium led by state-run Indian Oil Corp (IOC), BPCL and OIL signed an agreement on Friday to buy 23.9 percent stake in Russia’s Vankor oil field from Rosneft for $2.1 billion, IOC said in a statement.  The agreement between IOC, Oil India and Bharat PetroResources, a subsidiary of Bharat Petroleum Corp and state-run Rosneft was signed on Friday in St.Petersburg, being visited by India’s Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan as the head of a delegation to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) which was held from Thursday to Friday. Indian explorer ONGC Videsh Ltd has recently picked up 15 percent stake in the Vankor fields for $1.27 billion. “Indian consortium of IOC, BPCL and OIL signed the agreement;earlier OVL had acquired 15 percent stakes in Vankor,” Pradhan said in a tweet IOC and OIL will pick up 8 percent stake each while the remaining 7.8 percent stake will go to BRPL. IOC-OIL-BPRL “signed the definitive agreement to acquire up to 23.9 percent shares from Rosneft Oil Company in JSC Vankorneft, a company organised under the law of the Russian Federation, which is the owner of Vankor and North Vankor Field licences,” IOC said Rosneft holds 85 percent shares in Vankor. “It is the largest of the fields, discovered and commissioned in Russia during the last 25 years and is located in the North of Eastern Siberia in Turukhansk district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, 142 km away from Igarka town,” the statement said. The recoverable resources of the Vankor field stood at 361 million tonnes of oil and condensate and 138 billion cubic metres of gas. “With the closure of the Vankor deal, IOC’s equity oil portfolio will go up by 1.6 million tonnes per annum,” the statement said.