State-owned Hindustan Petroleum Corporation has joined the Indian consortium negotiating buying a 49% stake in Russia’s Vankor Cluster oilfields, PTI reported on Monday. Originally, ONGC Videsh Ltd, or OVL, had signed a Memorandum of Understanding to explore buying stake in Suzunskoye, Tagulskoye and Lodochnoye fields, which are collectively known as the Vankor Cluster.

Later, Indian Oil Corporation, Oil India and Bharat PetroResources, a unit of BPCL, joined the consortium. Now, HPCL has also joined the talks.

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Russia’s national oil company Rosneft, which owns the fields, is keen to retain the majority stake and sell only up to 49%. Meanwhile, ONGC Videsh Ltd wants to keep the largest share of 20-26%. This leaves OIL-IOC-BPRL-HPCL together a share of around 23.9%.

Last year, OVL acquired 15% stake in Russia’s second-biggest oilfield of Vankor for $1.27 billion (Rs 81.90 billion). Then, it bought an additional 11% for $930 million (Rs 59.90 billion). The 26% stake would give OVL 7.31 million tonnes of oil, while the other four companies with their 23.9% share would get 6.56 million tonnes of oil at a cost of around $2.02 billion (Rs 130.3 billion).

Vankorneft, a subsidiary of Rosneft, is developing the Vankor oil and gas condensate field, situated in the northern part of eastern Siberia.

The OIL-IOC-BPRL consortium has also taken another 29.9% stake in a separate Taas-Yuryakh oilfield in East Siberia for $1.12 billion (Rs 72.2 billion). Thus, the total investments by Indian companies in Russian oilfields will give it 15.18 million tonnes of oil equivalent.