India's share from oil fields abroad where it has taken equity stake, will spiral more than three-folds to 13 million tonnes of crude by 2007, Petroleum Minister Ram Naik said on Thursday.

New Delhi has been encouraging state-run oil firms to take stakes in oil fields abroad to cut the country's import dependence to meet its crude oil requirement. India imports 78 million tonnes of crude annually, while its domestic production stagnates at around 32 million tonnes.

Speaking at a Confederation of Indian Industry conference on energy security, Naik said India's flagship ONGC Videsh Ltd's investment in an oil field in Sudan is giving the country 3.2 million tonnes of crude annually. This, together with the revenues realised from sale of gas from a Vietnam field where OVL has 45 per cent stake, contributes Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 100 billion) annually.

OVL, the overseas arm of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, has taken stake in two more oil blocks in Sudan, which are expected to go on production by 2005-06. Besides, a couple of prospective blocks in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran and Myanmar too are likely to go on production by then.

"Our share from these (fields) will be over 13 million tonnes of crude in 2007," Naik said.

OVL has also taken 20 per cent interest in gigantic Sakhalin-I oil and gas project in Russia which will go on stream by 2007 end.

At home, ONGC is investing about Rs 11,000 crore (Rs 110 billion) in improving oil and gas recovery from 15 producing fields like Mumbai High. "The actual production gain due to this has been 4.57 million tonnes of oil [valued at Rs 4,600 crore (Rs 46 billion)]," he said.

Naik said extensive exploration is being carried out in unexplored regions to augment domestic production. 70 blocks have been awarded during the last three years for exploration of oil and gas and Rs 14,500 crore (Rs 145 billion) investment has been committed in these blocks.

Besides, 21 more blocks would be awarded by the year end.

To supplement domestic natural gas, which meets only 55 per cent of the 115 million standard cubic meters per day of demand, ambitious projects to extract gas from coal bed have been launched, he said.

"The current estimates indicate that production of 13.5 million standard cubic meters per day can be achieved (by tapping gas lying below coal seams)," he said.

Another project undertaken by the government to cut import dependence is mixing ethanol extracted from sugarcane in petrol.

"Five per cent ethanol doped petrol has been introduced in 9 major sugarcane producing states. We are also trying to see if non-edible oils can be mixed with diesel, which is bulk transportation fuel used in India," he said.

Naik said the per capita annual consumption of energy in India is around 0.32 tonnes of oil equivalent as compared to 8.80 tonnes of oil equivalent in the United States.

"Our energy requirements are bound to increase with the growth in economy," he said.

India spent Rs 84,000 crore (Rs 840 billion) last year on crude oil imports, about 67% of which came from Middle East countries.

"The general political instability in the Middle East region is a cause of anxiety from the oil supply security perspective and hence we are trying to tap alternate sources," he added.