Mumbai: Norsk Hydro of Norway is seeking to hike its stake in Oil and Natural Gas Corp's gas discovery block in Krishna Godavari basin to around 30-per cent from the current 10 per cent it holds.

Norsk Hydro has the right to double its interests in the KG-DWN-98/2 block before the gas discoveries are put to production, ONGC sources said.

State-run explorer ONGC has agreed for a joint operatorship of the block, but is willing to give only 22-24 per cent stake to Norsk Hydro.

ONGC, which needs deep water production technology for the project, may have to agree to an increased equity stake for the partner, sources said.

Besides Norsk Hydro, Petrobras of Brazil has 15 per cent stake in the block, which is close to Reliance Industries' D6 block, while Cairn India has 10 per cent.

Petrobras too has right to double its stake to 30 per cent. Sources said, in the event of Norsk Hydro being given 30 per cent and Petrobras also doubling its stake, ONGC would be left with just 30 per cent stake and would be on equal footing with the Norwegian and Brazilian companies.

ONGC is planning investment of $5.3 billion in developing gas finds in KG-DWN-98/2 and an adjoining block to produce 25 million standard cubic metres of gas per day (mmscmd) by 2013.

The block is estimated to hold around 6.37 trillion cubic feet of gas and produce around 25 million standard cubic feet of the fuel every day. ONGC has also discovered gas in ultra deepwater areas in the block. It, however, does not have the technological expertise to bring to production gas from those depths.

The two overseas companies have the technological expertise and experience of producing gas from deepwater areas.