"Notwithstanding the fact that Chinese oil giant China National Petroleum Corp. upped its offer to beat Indian major oil companies Oil and Natural Gas Corporation-Mittal group combine, both countries seem keen to join hands in their desperate search for oil and gas," said oil expert Amitav Ranjan.

He said both sides felt they could collaborate in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and Latin America in their hunt for oil and other sources of energy.

CNPC outbid ONGC-Mittal by raising its bid to $4.18 billion to acquire the Canadian oil firm operating in Central Asia. The ONGC-Mittal combine had bid $3.6 billion.

"ONGC-Mittal combine was not given a chance to match or re-bid," said an Indian Petroleum Ministry official.

When CNPC said it will pay $55 a share in cash, the Indian bidders were taken aback.

"The Indians were ahead of Chinese in the first round. The merchant bankers acting on behalf of seller had even sought certain clarifications on their bid on Friday," ONGC said.

It said the Indians were to submit the clarifications on Monday but the sale announcement came before that.

India and China have been competing to acquire oil companies in the former Soviet Union. On this project, China was keen to bag the company as its flagship firm lost out in the bid for U.S. oil firm Unocal because of U.S. political opposition to the deal.

"We missed it by a narrow margin," said ONGC Chief Managing Director Subir Raha.

Indians informed the merchant bankers about their willingness to better their bid of close to $4 billion. They had asked for some information from the seller, which was not provided.

"Besides, the sellers were unable to explain why Indians were not given a chance to re-bid," said a senior ONGC official.

The Kazakh oil company made the sale announcement a few hours ahead of a scheduled filing by ONGC-Mittal group at the London office of the merchant banker.

Petrokazakhstan accounts for 12 per cent of oil production in Kazakhstan. The company owns 500 million barrels of reserves, 150,000 barrels of a day crude output, and a refinery in Kazakhstan.

"The defeat by Chinese should not harm proposed joint Indo-China oil search," said Ranajan.

He is of the view both sides should strengthen their cooperation in the oil sector.

An Indian oil delegation visited China in early August to discuss cooperation. Indian Oil Corp., one of the major Indian oil companies, is expected to sign a memorandum of understanding with China Petroleum and Chemical Corp. for cooperation in petrochemical sector.

Similarly, ONGC is likely to collaborate with China's oil company to explore the possibilities of joint bids. Several oil companies in both the countries have expressed willingness to work together.

"The collaboration would extend to joint bids for assets in third countries, China and India, two biggest consumers of oil and gas in Asia and among top five in the world, are scouting for energy in various parts of the world," said a Petroleum Ministry source.

"It was felt during the discussions that each of us has specific areas or strengths and we could collaborate in West Asia, Central Asia, Africa and Latin America," said another oil sector analyst.

He said the Chinese side felt collaboration could be extended to even bigger projects in North America and Europe.

India has lobbied hard to make China agree for joint bids in bigger American and European oil giants. New Delhi made the offers to Beijing at various delegation level talks. China has not yet responded to Indian proposal, however.

Indian Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyer is visiting Beijing later this year and is , expected to participate in talks on a framework for government-level cooperation in the hydrocarbon sector.

"Following this a joint working group for monitoring progress in specific areas will be set up," said a government official.

A thaw in the relations between the two Asian giants was achieved in the global oil sector when India and China decided in early August to set up a joint working group to monitor and forge bilateral cooperation in energy sector.

It was the first dialogue between the two countries on oil-sector cooperation following an improvement in relation in 1987.

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