New Delhi, March 11: ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the overseas arm of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, is in talks to acquire a stake in two Siberian oilfields, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan said today.

"OVL is in discussions with a Russian oil company to acquire participating interest in two Siberian oilfields," he said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.

"The discussions are at a preliminary stage," Pradhan said. While the minister did not name the fields, officials said OVL was in talks for a stake in the Vankor and Yurubcheno-Tokhomskoye fields.

An agreement for the stake was to be signed during the visit of Russian President Vladmir Putin in December last year, but differences between the two sides prevented the formal signing of the pact.

Russia's biggest oil company Rosneft had offered to sell a 10 per cent stake in the strategic Vankor oilfield in Siberia to OVL.

In September 2014, Rosneft had sold 10 per cent in the Vankor cluster fields in northern Siberia to China's CNPC for about $1 billion.

Sources said the Indian company was keen on getting a higher stake in the oil-rich field provided it was allowed to market its own share of production from the field.

Vankor is the largest field to have been discovered and brought into production in Russia in the last 25 years. As of January 1, 2014, the initial recoverable reserves in the field were estimated at 500 million tonnes of oil and condensate, and 182 billion cubic meters of gas.

Vankor will reach a peak output of 500,000 barrels per day (bpd), or 25 million tonnes a year, in 2019. The field, which has driven the recent Russian output growth, pumped 435,000 bpd in September 2014.

Besides Vankor, Rosneft has made a proposal to OVL for the joint development of the Yurubcheno-Tokhomskoye oilfield in eastern Siberia.

The field is estimated to hold 991 million barrels of oil equivalent reserves and is expected to start production in 2017. Yurubcheno-Tokhomskoye will reach a production plateau of up to 5 million tonnes a year (100,000 bpd) in 2019.

OVL is interested in expanding its presence in Russia as it looks to source one million barrels per day of oil and oil-equivalent gas from Russia.