Cairn India slashes 2015-16 capex on falling crude

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Cairn India Ltd, India's largest private sector crude oil producer, said on Wednesday it would cut spending by about 60 percent for the fiscal year starting April 1, as falling oil prices hurt profitability and make project expansions unviable.

The company, a unit of London-listed Vedanta Resources Plc, is revising capital expenditure, or capex, for the 2015-16 financial year to $500 million from $1.2 billion, while deferring the rest, Cairn India said in a statement.

Vedanta Resources Chief Executive Tom Albanese said in January the company would apply "a meaningful reduction" to its previously planned $2 billion spending across businesses in the coming fiscal year.

Cairn India will undertake projects that are economically viable at current oil prices, the company said.

Cairn, which plans to spend $3 billion over three years to boost oil production and natural gas output in Rajasthan, lso said it expected volumes to grow this year despite the reduction in spending.

(Reporting by Aman Shah in Mumbai; Editing by Biju Dwarakanath)