NEW DELHI (Dow Jones)— Iran's Petropars has offered to sell a 10% stake in Phase 12 of the South Pars gas field to Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, a senior Petropars executive said Tuesday, even as talks continue with Indian oil companies over participating in the project.

Petropars Chief Executive Gholam-Reza Manouchehri told reporters that the stake sale to Venezuela's state-owned oil company could fetch Petropars, a unit of state-run National Iranian Oil Company, around $760 million.
The South Pars gas field, which is owned jointly by Iran and Qatar, is the world's largest gas reservoir and contains about half of Iran's gas resources. Iran wants to boost its natural gas output and exports, though its energy industry remains hobbled by sanctions, a lack of foreign and domestic investment and technical challenges.
The South Pars field is located in the Persian Gulf, 100 kilometers off Iran's south coast. The gas field has been divided into 28 phases for exploration, with each phase capable of extracting 28 million cubic meters of gas a day.
The Phase 12 field is the south-eastern block of South Pars and covers an area equal to 150 square kilometers. Manouchehri Monday said ONGC Videsh Ltd., the overseas exploration unit of India's state-run Oil & Natural Gas Corp., and the Hinduja group is seeking a combined 40% stake in Phase 12, whose development will cost $7.5 billion.
Tuesday, he added that if ONGC and its partners pick up a 40% stake in Phase 12 and Angola's state-run oil company, Sonangol, picks up another 20%, then Petropars would have to cut its originally planned stake of 40% to 30% in order to bring in PDVSA.
If the deal with ONGC and its partners doesn't materialize, the stake-holding pattern of the project would be decided later, he said.