NEW DELHI • India’s state-run Oil and Natural Gas and China’s Sinopec have jointly won a bid for 50 per cent in oil company Omimex de Colombia, an executive with the Mumbai-based firm said yesterday.

“Yes, we have won the bid for 50 per cent stake, of which ONGC will have half the share,” the Oil and Natural Gas Corp executive, who declined to be named, said from India’s financial capital Mumbai.

He said the $800m deal was likely to be concluded by the end of the month.

Omimex de Colombia, Ltd has fields in Colombia with proven reserves of around 157 million barrels of oil and is fully owned by Omimex Resources, Inc, a US-based oil and gas exploration and production company.

This is the second major joint oil deal between Asian giants and economic rivals. India and China have been cooperating in securing energy assets in third countries to fuel their fast-growing economies.

In December Indian and Chinese energy firms joined hands to buy Petro-Canada’s 37-per cent stake in Syrian oil fields for $573m

In January the two rising economic giants formalised their cooperation by signing an agreement to secure global energy assets. In June, an Indian official said the two were planning a joint bid for oil assets in the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan.