Federal Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar said that India and China signed a framework that would allow state-owned oil and gas companies can evolve and submit joint bids for acquisition of assets overseas. The two countries fought bitterly to acquire oil fields in Kazakhstan, Angola, and Nigeria with only the seller benefiting from the sale. The framework extended beyond bidding for assets to joint exploration for gas in each other's potential spots, sharing of information, oil recovery, refining, marketing, transmission, and trans-national pipeline construction. He said that India is bidding for hydrocarbon assets in 50 countries and while competition between the two cannot be ruled out, co-operation is what is expected.

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