New Delhi, Jan 10 (PTI) After a gap of over three-decades, state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) is set toopen a new sedimentary basin in the country as it puts Kutchoffshore on the oil and gas map of India.
Kutch would be India's eighth sedimentary basin. ONGC hadpreviously opened for commercial production six out of India'sseven producing basins. Cauvery was the last Category-Iproducing basin which was discovered in 1985.
ONGC has made a significant natural gas discovery in theGulf of Kutch off the west coast, which it plans to bring toproduction in 2-3 years, senior company officials said.
India has 26 sedimentary basins, of which only seven havecommercial production of oil and gas. Except for the Assamshelf, ONGC opened up for commercial production all the othersix basins, including Cambay, Mumbai Offshore, Rajasthan,Krishna Godavari, Cauvery and Assam-Arakan Fold Belt.
The discovery in Kutch offshore may hold about 1 trillioncubic feet of gas reserves.
The spread of Kutch offshore basin covers an area of28000 square kilometres in water depth of up to 200 meters andwill become eighth producing basin of the country.
Talking about the possibility of adding new basin forproduction, ONGC Director (Exploration) A K Dwivedi said: "Theresults are very encouraging and I am sure that this is goingto open up many new opportunities".
He said several state-of-the-art technologies likebroadband seismic acquisition have been used in explorationcampaign to acquire more accurate data from the explorationacreages.
While congratulating the exploration Team, ONGC Chairmanand Managing Director Shashi Shanker said, "Our constantefforts will be on looking for new opportunities to replenishour reserves. Our focus is to improve the quality of pre-drilling data through the use of innovative technologies inorder to improve the success rate."Exploration, he said, is the most important value creatorfor any E&P company worldwide.
"ONGC will leave no stone unturned to improve successrate from its exploratory campaigns. We are trying to optimizecost as much as possible, both during pre and post exploratorydrilling phases," he said.
However, imbibing most modern technologies as well asconducting a customized training programme for thegeoscientists to substantially enhance the quality of databefore exploratory drilling starts are needed, he said. "Thiswill have a huge positive impact both in short and long run."In order to go for early monetising of Kutch Offshore,ONGC is looking for pricing support from the Government ofIndia. Since Kutch Offshore is a difficult field, its cost ofproduction is also going to be high. Hence, a matching pricingsupport is extremely important.
Officials said the present government-mandated gas priceof USD 2.89 per million British thermal unit does not make thediscovery commercially viable. Since the find is in shallowwaters, it does not qualify to get the USD 6.30 per mmBtu capprice set for difficult fields.
ONGC, they said, has stepped up the acquisition of 2D and3D seismic data in a bid to raise production and help cutcountry's dependence on imports to meet oil needs by 10 percent by 2022.
In 2017, the company acquired around 7000 squarekilometre of 3D seismic data.
Officials said 37 discoveries have been made in last twoyears. 17 of these are onland, 18 in shallow water and two aredeepsea discoveries.
Also, a framework for monetisation of 166 new and smalldiscoveries have been mapped at the Basin and Asset level,they added. PTI ANZMR.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.