Mumbai: India's crude oil production in August rose for the ninth straight month, led by non-state firms including Cairn India, operator of the nation's biggest onshore field.

Asia's third-biggest energy consumer pumped 3.2 million metric tonnes of oil, equivalent to about 768,000 barrels a day, an increase of 15 per cent from a year earlier, the Oil Ministry said in a statement yesterday.

Production by non-state explorers more than doubled to 822,300 tonnes, the government said. Cairn India started production from a field in Rajasthan state in August last year.

State-owned Oil & Natural Gas Corp, the nation's largest energy explorer, produced 2.1 million tonnes of oil, 2.2 per cent less than a year earlier, according to the ministry.

Gasfield

Output at ONGC's Mumbai High fields declined 1.9 per cent to 1.4 million tonnes. The fields, 160km northwest of Mumbai in the Arabian Sea, account for about 44 per cent of India's oil production.

Oil India, the second-biggest state-run crude producer, reported a 2.3 per cent increase in output to 311,100 tonnes, according to the statement.

India is Asia's (excluding the Middle East) third-largest oil producer, behind China and Indonesia, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy.

Natural gas output in India rose for the 18th straight month, increasing 11.9 per cent to 4.3 billion cubic metres, according to the data. Reliance Industries, India's biggest non-state refiner, started production from the country's biggest gas field in April 2009.

Mumbai (Bloomberg) Indian refiners, including state-owned Hindustan Petroleum, reduced crude-oil processing in August for the first month in five.

Refiners turned 13.5 million metric tonnes of crude into oil products last month, 2.3 per cent less than a year earlier, the Oil Ministry said in a statement in New Delhi yesterday.

Processing by Indian Oil, the nation's biggest state refiner, increased 0.4 per cent to 4.3 million tonnes. Hindustan Petroleum cut output 19.4 per cent to 1.2 million tonnes and Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals reduced production 9.8 per cent to 878,600 tonnes, according to the ministry.

Reliance Industries, operator of the world's biggest refining complex, produced 3 million tonnes of fuels last month, 1.4 per cent more than a year earlier. Essar Oil, India's second-biggest non-state refiner, turned 0.3 per cent more crude into fuels last month, according to the ministry.