NEW DELHI: In its biggest buy, India's ONGC Videsh Ltd announced a deal to acquire UK-listed Imperial Energy at 1.4 billion pounds (nearly Rs 112 billion), beating arch rival China.Having lost assets in Ecuador, Kazakhstan and Angola to Chinese aggression, OVL, the overseas investment arm of Oil and Natural Gas Corp, won the approval of Imperial's board of directors for its 1,250 pence a share offer.

Imperial Energy will give OVL, which is looking to invest in oil projects in Russia, Central Asia and Africa, access to Siberia, an area believed to hold huge hydrocarbon deposits.OVL incorporated a wholly-owned subsidiary Jarpeno Ltd in Cyprus to launch an offer for Imperial Energy on July 12, a move that prompted China Petroleum and Chemical Corp (Sinopec) to make a counter approach.

The Chinese firm, however, did not better the Indian offer price."Imperial Energy's Directors are pleased to have been able to reach an agreement with OVL and intend unanimously to recommend shareholders accept the offer," a joint statement of the two companies distributed by Regulatory News Service said.Imperial, a relatively small British oil and gas company based in Leeds in the UK, has oil producing blocks in Tomsk region of western Siberia in Russia and Kastanai in north- central Kazakhstan."I am very happy to hear of this news.

For about a year now our people had been working on this transaction and we hope everything is sorted out in time," Petroleum Minister Murli Deora told PTI here. The OVL offer now needs approval of Imperial Energy shareholders and some regulatory clearances.Russia, which is on a nationalization spree, may hold the key to this deal and one of the state-controlled energy firms, either OAO Gazprom or OAO Rosneft is likely to be involved in the transaction to win Moscow's approval.

"The Imperial Energy Directors, who have been so advised by Merrill Lynch and RBS Hoare Govett, consider the terms of the offers to be fair and reasonable," the statement said. Under the terms of share offer, Imperial Energy shareholders will be entitled to receive 1,250 pence in cash for each Imperial Energy share held, representing a premium of approximately 61.9 per cent to 772 pence being the closing mid-market price on July 11.