New Delhi  - India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has acquired London Stock Exchange-listed Imperial Energy Plc for 1.3 billion pounds (1.88 billion dollars), a news report said Wednesday.

An overwhelming 97 per cent of Imperial's shareholders accepted the offer by state-run ONGC's overseas investment arm, ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL), the PTI news agency reported.

According to the report, the deadline for OVL's 12.50 pounds a share offer had closed on Tuesday and 99,241,110 or 96.8 per cent of the shares were tendered, the OVL informed the London Stock Exchange.

The OVL needed 90 per cent shareholders to approve its deal, which will result in delisting of Imperial that has most of its energy assets in Russia.

The report quoted ONGC chairman RS Sharma saying the company owed the acquisition to government support that had seen OVL increase its number of projects in the past seven years to 39 in 17 countries.

Some Indian media questioned the economics of the deal, saying that oil prices had dropped to 40 dollar a barrel from about 130 dollars when the ONGC unveiled the proposal in August.

Imperial, a relatively small oil and gas company based in Leeds, has oil producing blocks in Siberia in Russia and Kastanai in Kazakhstan.

The buy is the largest overseas acquisition by OVL, which has been trying to secure energy resources worldwide over the past few years.

OVL has participation in 35 projects with 50 blocks in 17 countries, and has a long-term target of acquiring 60 million metric tons per annum of equity oil and gas overseas by 2025.

In 2003, ONGC paid 1.7 billion dollars to buy a 20 per cent stake in Exxon Mobil Corp's Sakhalin-1 field in Russia. It also paid 785 million dollars for a stake in the Greater Nile project in Sudan.

In April this year, the firm announced that it was investing about 450 million dollars in Venezuela for a 40-per-cent stake in an oil field. (dpa)