Oil and Natural Gas Corporation on Wednesday awarded six of its small oil fields in Assam and Gujarat to private firms for development and production.

ONGC will retain full ownership of the fields and the produce, and will pay the private firms a fee for putting them into production.

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"Developing small fields for a company of ONGC's size is an expensive proposition. A leaner and focused private firm can do the job much cheaper," ONGC chairman and managing director Subir Raha told reporters in New Delhi.

Three fields in Gujarat -- Hirapur, Khambel and West Bechraji -- were awarded to Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd's subsidiary Prize Petroleum and three fields in Assam -- Bihubar, Laxmijan and Barsila -- to Assam Company.

Two fields -- Kamboi and South Pathan -- were awarded to GSPC and the contract for this would be signed later.

The fields hold in-place reserves of 8.97 million tonnes of oil and oil equivalent gas. The total cumulative production from these six fields for which contracts were signed on Wednesday, will be 9.01 million barrels and the peak production would be about 1.5 million barrels per annum.

"We expect the first oil from the fields in 2006 and a peak production of 0.214 million tonnes per annum. The cumulative production from the fields would be 1.434 million tonnes, which at $20 a barrel costs about Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion)," ONGC director (exploration) Y B Sinha said.