MUMBAI - India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp said steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal has pulled out of a project to jointly develop an oil block in Kazakhstan, but their partnerships in other blocks were intact.

ONGC would still develop the Kazakhstan block, ONGC Chairman R.S. Sharma said. State-run ONGC and Mittal have a producing block in Syria and are drilling two blocks in Nigeria, he said.

Whatever has appeared in the media is true, Sharma told reporters. We will continue to be partners in other blocks, which we are developing.

The Economic Times reported on Wednesday, citing an anonymous Mittal group representative, that Mittal Investments had pulled out of the project to develop the block.

ONGC Mittal Energy was to have acquired a 25 percent stake in Satpaev block from state-owned KazMunaiGaz and invested a total of $400 million in the project, the paper said.

The board of ONGC Videsh, the overseas arm of ONGC, met on Tuesday and decided to write to the Kazakh government and move towards acquiring Mittal Investments' interest in Satpaev, the paper said. (Reporting by Pratish Narayanan & Narayanan Somasundaram; Editing by John Mair)

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