New Delhi: State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) has arrested a declining crude oil production trend in its onshore fields and registered a 1.25 per cent rise in output in the fiscal year ending March 2019, top company officials said, Sunday.
ONGC produced 6.141 million tonnes of crude oil from its onshore fields despite majority of them being more than 50 years old and facing a natural decline.
The company has been able to make a production turnaround through a slew of initiatives, the officials informed.
India’s largest oil and gas producer has in recent times faced immense pressure from the government, which has blamed it for the continuing decline in the country’s output. It is essential to increase the output if Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s target of cutting oil imports by 10 per cent by 2022 is to be achieved.
ONGC has already reversed years of decline in natural gas output, posting a record 6.5 per cent jump in production to 25.9 billion cubic metres in 2018-19.
However, oil production from offshore fields continues to be on a decline and will only reverse next year when Krishna Godavari basin field ‘KG-DWN-98/2’ comes onstream.
ONGC has monetised five out of the total 13 discoveries during 2018-19 on a fast-track mode which has helped the company achieve growth in production from onshore fields.
In order to sustain production and achieve higher onshore growth, ONGC drilled 303 wells during the last fiscal, which is the highest since 2014-15. The company has invested about Rs 5,000 crore in the last fiscal in its onshore operations on a number of projects and has a similar investment plan for the financial year 2019-20, according to the officials.
ONGC CMD Shashi Shanker is satisfied with the latest development. “The growth in onshore production has been achieved beating enormous challenges which cropped up due to ageing of the fields. This has come at a time when fields with similar vintage are facing a sharp decline internationally,” Shankar pointed out.
“A well-wise focused approach and deploying state-of-the-technology for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) have started paying a rich dividend in not only arresting the decline in production trend but also to grow,” added Shankar.