Reliance Industries and Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemical Ltd (MRPL) have committed to buy up

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to 45 per cent of the crude oil ONGC Videsh Ltd and its partners plan to produce from a Venezuelan oilfield.

The overseas arm of Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) and partners - Spain's Repsol YPF, Malaysian state Petronas, Indian Oil Corp and Oil India Ltd, had last month won the Carabobo-1 heavy oilfield in Venezuela.

Sources said the work entails producing up to 480,000 barrels a day (24 million tonnes a year) of extra-heavy oil and building an upgrader to convert it into higher quality crude.

The consortium would invest USD 8.8 billion in developing the oilfields and another USD 12.1 billion in the upgrader.

OVL, Repsol and Petronas all have an 11 per cent stake each in the project, while IOC and OIL have 3.5 per cent each. The rest 60 per cent is held by Petroleos de Venezuela (PDV).

Sources said of the planned output, Repsol had indicated it can take 165,000 barrels per day while Petronas said it could take 100,000 bpd. The remaining 220,000 bpd was split equally between OVL and OIL.

OVL's share of 110,000 bpd would go to ONGC's subsidiary MRPL, while RIL said it would take OIL's share for at least 10 years from the date the upgrader starts up in 2016-17.

A RIL spokesperson declined to comment.

Originally, OVL had planned to bid for the Venezuelan oilfield along with RIL but it later dropped out and was replaced by Repsol and Petronas.