Cairn India on Monday crossed the 1-lakh barrel-mark of crude oil production from Rajasthan after IndianOil (IOC) began buying oil from this prolific oilfield.

The Mangala oilfields in Barmer district of Rajasthan is producing 1.05 lakh barrels per day (bpd) and will reach the peak output of 1.25 lakh barrels later this month, industry sources said. This record output was achieved after IOC began drawing oil from Cairn's newly constructed pipeline.

IOC is buying 13,000 bpd, sources said. Cairn now sells oil to Reliance Industries' Jamnagar refinery in Gujarat and neighbouring Vadinar plant of Essar Oil. Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals (MRPL), Cairn's first customer, has temporarily stopped taking the Mangala crude to study optimisation of the crude, they said.

IOC will buy 9 lakh tonnes annually from Cairn for processing at its Panipat refinery in Haryana.

Mangala crude is being pumped into IOC's 1,174-km-long Mundra-Panipat pipeline for transportation to the refinery.

Cairn had last month stated that it had begun crude oil supplies to refiners such as Essar Oil through a newly-built pipeline from Barmer in Rajasthan to Salaya in Gujarat. This pipeline connects IOC's Mundra-Panipat line.

IOC has also contracted 6 lakh tonnes of Managla crude oil for processing at its Koyali refinery in Gujarat but supplies to the unit would commence only in October or November.

Essar Oil, which has signed up for 30,000 bpd of Mangala crude for processing at its Vadinar refinery in Gujarat, was the first to start receiving Rajasthan crude from the heated pipeline built from Barmer to Salaya.

Sources said RIL buys 75,000 bpd of Mangala crude. The pipeline will help ramp up production from Mangala field to 1.25 lakh barrels per day in the second-half of 2010.