India's eighth sedimentary basin to go live in 2 years
28 April 2017 5:08 PM GMT
The state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) will open up India's eighth sedimentary basin -- the first in over three decades -- for oil and gas production in two years, Chairman Dinesh K Sarraf said on Friday.
ONGC, which laid open for commercial production six out of India's seven producing basins, has made a significant natural gas discovery in the Gulf of Kutch off India's west coast, which it plans to bring to production in two years.
"This will be the eighth-producing basin in India," he told reporters on the margins of an industry event here.
India has 26 sedimentary basins, of which only seven have commercial production of oil and gas. Except for the Assam shelf, ONGC opened up for commercial production all the other six basins, including Cambay, Mumbai Offshore, Rajasthan, Krishna Godavari, Cauvery and Assam-Arakan Fold Belt.
Declining to give details, he said the discovery made in the Gulf of Kutch is in shallow waters, but cannot be tied to either the production facilities in Mumbai High fields or Hazira and may require a new landfall point.
The company, the chairman, said had had a record number of oil and gas discoveries in the fiscal year to March 31.
"In all, we had 23 discoveries," he said. ONGC has continued to spend on exploration and development of discovered reserves despite the worldwide trend of putting on hold future investment in view of low oil prices. The International Energy Agency (IEA) on Thursday stated that global oil discoveries fell to a record low in 2016 as companies continued to cut spending and conventional oil projects sanctioned were at the lowest level in more than 70 years.
"We made 35 per cent more discoveries in 2016-17 as compared to 17 we made in 2015-16," he pointed out. Of the 23 new discoveries, 12 are new prospects – a potential trap which may contain hydrocarbons while 11 are new pools – a geological term for subsurface hydrocarbon accumulation. As many as 13 new discoveries were made in onland and 10 in offshore wells.
"A total of 100 exploratory wells were drilled as compared to 92 wells drilled in the previous year 2015-16. Of these, 37 wells proved hydrocarbon bearing registering success ratio of 37 per cent," he said.
He added that the accretion of in-place hydrocarbons was 203.24 million tonnes of oil and oil equivalent gas and the ultimate reserve accretion was 64.32 mt. pti
Trump Govt favours export of oil & natural gas to US 'friends'
The Trump administration favours export of oil and natural gas to allies and friends like India, a top cabinet official has said. US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's comments came as US President Donald Trump prepared to take steps towards removing the shackles on offshore energy exploration. "We would like to export (oil and natural gas) to other countries," Zinke said at a White House news conference on Thursday. "Part of our national security is to not only be able to provide ourselves with energy independence but also to provide our allies with energy, certainly liquid natural gas in Europe," he said, adding that export of oil and natural gas requires infrastructure, which is not the case now. "We are working our ways to make sure we can reverse that. A lot of it is the infrastructure. And we are quite frankly behind in the infrastructure," he said. Providing US allies with affordable, reliable and abundant energy is something the US is looking into, Zeke said. "I am a supporter of export," he said. Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had visited the US in March and discussed with energy secretary Rick Perry the export of LNG to India from early 2018. Indian investments in LNG and Shale sector in the US by both the government and the private sector were also discussed. Zinke said on Friday Trump would sign an executive order to direct a review of the locations available for offshore oil and gas exploration and of certain regulations governing offshore oil and gas exploration.
Next Story
