Indian Firm to Pay $2.6 Billion to Build its Stake in African Gas Project

HONG KONG-A unit of India’s state-run Oil & Natural Gas Corp. said Monday that it would pay $2.64 billion in cash for a minority stake in a natural gas project in a Mozambique, the latest example of how Asia’s biggest emerging economies are zeroing in on the African nation’s vast offshore energy resources.

ONGC Videsh, the overseas unit of the Indian company, said it would acquire a 10 percent stake in Mozambique’s Offshore Area 1 from Anadarko Petroleum, which is based in Texas and listed in New York. Andarko will retain a 26.5 percent stake and remain the operator of the project, which includes investments from Japanese and Thai companies and two other Indian companies, as well as the Mozambican state oil company.

The discovery in recent years of tremendous amounts of recoverable natural gas resources in the deep waters of the Indian Ocean off Mozambique’s coast has drawn billions of dollars of investment from state-run and private companies from energy-hungry developing nations in Asia.

‘‘Area 1 has potential to become one of the world’s largest L.N.G. projects,’’ Sudhir Vasudeva, the chairman of ONGC Videsh, said in a statement Monday, referring to liquefied natural gas. He described the deal as a ‘‘significant’’ step ‘‘towards the energy security of our country.’’

In June, ONGC Videsh teamed up with Oil India, another state-run company, in a $2.48 billion deal to acquire a separate 10 percent stake in the Area 1 project from Videocon, a privately owned Indian conglomerate.

Area 1 covers about 2.6 million acres, or 1 million hectares, of ocean and contains estimated recoverable reserves of 35 trillion to 65 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to Andarko. Investors expect that their first shipments of liquefied natural gas from the project will begin by 2018.

Exploration and production of a separate Mozambican block, known as Area 4, is being led by the Italian oil and gas company ENI. In March, China National Petroleum Corp., a state-owned company, agreed to pay $4.3 billion for a 20 percent stake in the ENI project, which is also being backed by the Mozambique state oil company Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos de Moçambique; Korea Gas, of South Korea; and Galp Energia, of Portugal.

In their announcements Monday, ONGC Videsh and Anadarko said their transaction remained subject to government and regulatory approvals in India and Mozambique and was expected to close by the end of the year.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch is the financial adviser to ONGC Videsh on the deal and Simmons & Simmons is the legal adviser.