“Russia has received offers (to that effect) from the Indian company,” Sergei Bogdanchikov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. Rosneft was currently studying ONGC’s offer, he added.

ONGC is also expressing interest in taking part in oil projects on Sakhalin (a Russian Far-Eastern island) and in the Pechora region,” in Russia’s polar North, Bogdanchikov added.

Bogdanchikov also denied allegations that Rosneft had had secured a credit line abroad to purchase Yukos core asset Yuganskneftegas for 9.3 billion dollars (7.2 billion euros) last December.

Rosneft recently secured a credit line of six billion dollars (4.6 billion euros) from Chinese banks using Russian state bank Vnesheconombank as an intermediary in return for guaranteed oil deliveries to China’s state oil firm CNPC, it emerged Tuesday.

Shedding light on the financing of the mystery takeover of Yuganskneftegaz, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told reporters that Chinese banks had lent Vnesheconombank six billion dollars to enable it in turn to provide financing to Rosneft.

But the Russian finance ministry on the following day issued its own statement denying any connection between the multi-billion-dollar loan and the Yugansk takeover.

Vnesheconombank in a statement said that it had indeed arranged a loan for that sum from a syndicate of Chinese banks to finance ”long-term and stable Russian oil supplies to China.”

However, it insisted that linking the credit it facilitated for Rosneft to the latter’s purchase of Yugansk was “unfounded and does not correspond to reality”.

The statement said: “Vnesheconombank did not participate in the acquisition of Yuganskneftegaz shares and was not asked to do so.”

Rosneft had not used foreign money to purchase Nefteyugansk, Bogdanchikov said Saturday.

“Rosneft obtained the funds to pay for 76.79 percent of Yuganskneftegaz’ shares from a syndicate of Russian banks and from the sale of some of our assets,” he said, declining to name those banks.