India's ONGC to spend $3 bln on east coast fields

NEW DELHI, July 31 (Reuters) - India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) (ONGC.BO) on Thursday said it would spend $3 billion to develop offshore fields and install processing facilities to produce up to 39 million standard cubic metres of gas.

It would set up a unit to receive and process gas from its fields in the gas-rich east coast region to speed up development of the state-run firm's assets, ONGC said in a statement.

ONGC did not say when it would start pumping gas from various phases of development of the small fields and deepwater block in the Krishna Godavari basin, where Reliance Industries Ltd (RELI.BO) has discovered huge gas reserves. (Reporting by Nidhi Verma, Editing by Mark Williams)