NEW DELHI: ONGC plans to raise crude oil production by four million tonnes (mt) and almost double natural gas output by 2020 to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s target of cutting India’s import dependence by 10 per cent, chairman Shashi Shanker has said. The oil major has drawn out a plan to increase crude oil production from 22.6 mt in 2017-18 to 26.42 mt by 2021-22. “The Prime Minister had given a call to cut the country’s oil imports by 10 per cent by 2022. Our roadmap for meeting that is ready,” Shanker said.
As on October 1, 2016, ONGC had 577 hydrocarbon discoveries. Most of them were either in production or action had been initiated to monetise them. The plan is to monetisation all the discoveries of ONGC.
“Prevailing natural gas price may pose viability issue for some of the discoveries, but we hope that movement towards free market pricing in coming years will aid their production,” Shanker said.
Most of the gas finds of ONGC are in shallow waters and do not command the difficult field rates.
About 5.3 mt is expected from fields where investment approval has already been given and another 8.45 mt from the fields that are under conceptualisation or investment approval is under process. For natural gas, the output is projected to drop from 19.73 billion cubic metres (bcm) from current fields to 11.9 British thermal units in 2021-22. It also has fields that are under development or conceptualisation. These are expected to yield 29.65 bcm by 2021-22.