Almaty: Indian state-run oil producer ONGC will seal its deal to buy Russia’s Imperial Energy “any day now”, a source close to negotiations told Reuters on Thursday.

In late August India’s biggest oil producer agreed a takeover of the mid-sized, London-listed Russian oil producer for $2.6 billion.

“It’s ongoing. We should expect the deal to finalise any day now,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In early September India’s oil minister Murli Deora said the deal was expected to be completed by the end of this week.

The deal will mark ONGC’s second investment in resource-rich Russia. The Indian company is a partner in the Sakhalin-1 oil and gas consortium headed by US major Exxon.

Imperial, which owns a number of licences in the west Siberian region of Tomsk, hopes to produce 35,000 barrels per day (bpd) by the end of 2009 and 80,000 bpd by 2011.

Separately, at an oil and gas conference in Kazakhstan’s financial capital Almaty, ONGC confirmed its interest in taking a stake in a Kazakhstan-based oil producer, and said it would also soon begin exploring the Caspian shelf.