The government has nominated Indian Oil Corp (IOC), Hindustan Petroleum Corp (HPCL) and Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals (MRPL) for purchasing crude oil from Cairn India's Rajasthan fields.
Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Jitin Prasada in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha said that IOC and MRPL have been allocated 0.20 million tonnes each in 2009-10, while HPCL would offtake 0.30 million tonnes of Rajasthan crude.
In 2010-11, IOC would buy 1.5 million tonnes of the crude oil from the nation's most prolific oil discovery in more than two decades, while MRPL would double its offtake to 0.40 million tonnes.
HPCL would take 0.50 million tonnes next fiscal, he said.
"The allocation of crude beyond the quantities of crude indicated above will be made after ascertaining the capacity of other public sector refineries to absorb the quality of crude produced from this oil field," he said.
Last month, Cairn India said that it will be ready to start crude oil production from the Rajasthan fields in August and has concluded price negotiations with the government appointed offtakers.
Rajasthan is the largest onland oilfield discovered in more than two decades and will have a peak output of 8.75 million tonnes, contributing one-fifth of the nation's current oil production.
Cairn India's Rajasthan oil fields will bring down India's oil import bill by $6.8 billion or 7 per cent, Goldman Sachs said adding peak output from the fields was likely to be 1,90,000 bpd (9.5 million tonnes a year) as against 1,75,000 bpd forecast by the company.
Cairn India CEO Rahul Dhir last week said that pricing negotiations for the initial offtake of Rajasthan crude have been concluded with IOC and MRPL.
"We have concluded pricing negotiations with MRPL and IOC for the initial quantities of crude from Rajasthan which currently represents a 10 to 15 per cent discount to Brent."
