Indian flagship overseas explorer ONGC Videsh Ltd. (OVL), Indian Oil Corp (IOC) and Oil India (OIL) have jointly declared that they have signed an agreement to develop an oil project in Venezuela. The coat of the project will be $20 billion.

This project is expected to provide the country around 3.6 million tonnes a year of crude. OVL and its partners have signed the agreement with Venezuelan national oil firm Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PdV). In this project the Indian firms will develop and produce hydrocarbons from the Carabobo project in the Orinoco region of Venezuela.

This is going to be a joint venture between the Indian companies and the Venezuelan national oil firm. The President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez Frias was also present in the ceremony when the agreement was been signed.

As per sources, Spain's Repsol-YPF SA, Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas) of Malaysia and OVL are the foreign investment arm of state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp. All of them have 11% stake in this consortium. It is expected to produce 400,000 barrels of oil per day.