Indian oil firms eyeing gas fields in Turkmenistan

Indian oil firms are looking at acquiring stakes in gas fields in Turkmenistan, Central Asia's top gas exporter, in a bid to meet the growing energy demand of Asia's third-largest economy.

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"We are looking at some of the blocks...We offered to invest in onshore gas producing fields," Oil Secretary S Sundareshan told reporters on Tuesday.

Oil Minister Murli Deora along with the oil secretary and executives from state-run firms on Tuesday met Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, who began his three-day visit to India on Monday.

India has been aggressively scouting for overseas oil and gas assets to meet the supply deficit in Asia's third-largest oil consumer.

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India's 2009/10 oil product consumption, a proxy for oil demand in the country, rose an annual 3.5 percent, higher than the government estimates of 2.4 percent, while its annual crude output rose 0.5 percent and gas output was up nearly 45 percent.

Both sides discussed a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, Deora said, without elaborating further.

The pipeline, valued at $4 billion, has long been discussed by governments and energy companies, but instability in Afghanistan has so far made its construction impossible.

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Pakistan and India had expressed interest in buying up to 70 billion cubic metres of Turkmen gas a year, or twice as much as initially proposed under the draft TAPI project, a Turkmen government source earlier told Reuters.

Deora said India has also offered to set up a petrochemical plant in Turkmenistan, if gas supplies are guaranteed.