The largest oil and gas producer in India, ONGC, will reverse years of production drop this year and progressively increase output moving forward as it invests billions to generate from more recent finds, a top company official said.
In the fiscal year 2021–2022, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) produced 21.707 million tonnes of crude oil, which is refined to make petroleum products like gasoline and diesel, and 21.68 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas, which is used to generate electricity, make fertilizer, and serve as compressed natural gas (CNG) in automobiles.
According to ONGC chairman Arun Kumar Singh, “We are absolutely looking forward to expanding production of oil and gas in 2023–24 and even in the present year.”
Production of gas and crude oil are expected to increase in the current fiscal year (2022-23) to 22.099 bcm and 22.823 million tonnes, respectively. Oil output will increase to 24.636 million tonnes in the following fiscal year and to 25.689 million tonnes in 2024–25. Because its fields are old and aging, ONGC, which accounts for around 71% of India’s domestic production, has recorded a steady fall in output for more than a decade.
In an effort to increase output, the government has contemplated transferring ownership of the largest oil and gas fields owned by ONGC to foreign and private corporations, but this has encountered internal opposition. Singh stated that the business is open to collaborations in complex technological domains.
20 significant projects totaling Rs 59,000 crore are being funded by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation ONGC, including the fourth phase reconstruction of Mumbai High fields and the extraction of oil and gas deposits discovered in deepsea KG block KG-DWN-98/2 (KG-D5).
The business will shortly connect subsea facilities and a floating production system (FPSO). The first oil from KG-D5 is anticipated in May 2023, and the peak output of gas, which will be in 2024–2025, will be 45,000 barrels per day (or 2.25 million tonnes yearly) and almost 12 million standard cubic metres per day.The block is anticipated to produce 2.784 bcm of gas and 1.935 million tonnes of oil in 2023–2024.
In order to stop the output fall and later increase it, Singh stated that ONGC will continue to invest around Rs 30,000 crore annually in capital expenditures. Levying a windfall profit tax on locally produced crude oil will have no effect on capital expenditures.
The company has made a little under 600 hydrocarbon finds. The majority of them were either being produced or had already begun to be commercialized.
The roadmap for expanding output addresses the strategies for monetizing all of ONGC’s discoveries, with the exception of around 42 finds that are remote or far from existing infrastructure, have extremely low quantities or are situated in challenging locations.
