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 today.
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) yesterday 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.
The reserve replacement ratio (RRR) for the year has been 1.49.
