The Hindu Business Line : ONGC renews interest in Cauvery deepwater asset

Snapshot
The company would get time till 2009 to finish the exploration work with the recent merging of Phases I and II.
More than 419 onland wells, 66 offshore wells have been already drilled in the Cauvery basin resulting in 29 oil and gas discoveries

Richa Mishra

New Delhi, Sept 10

The recent success of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) in the Cauvery Basin seems to have renewed interests of the oil companies for undertaking exploration activities in the region. State-owned ONGC is planning to explore its deepwater Cauvery block CY-DWN-2001/1, which is close to RIL’s successful block in the region.

The Cauvery block was won by ONGC in the third round of New Exploration Licencing Policy (NELP) with Oil India Ltd at its consortium partner. ONGC held 80 per cent stake in the block with remaining 20 per cent with OIL. Recently, ONGC has offered 25 per cent participating interest to Brazil’s Petrobras in the block.

Phase I

The company has taken six months extension for completing the first phase of exploratory activity in the block, which expires this month. However, with the recent proposal to merge the exploratory phases one and two for blocks awarded under the NELP three and four, the company would get time till 2009 to finish the work. As per the production sharing contract, the total exploration period is to be for a maximum of seven years divided into two exploration commitment phases. The first phase is for five years.

Focus on East Coast

A senior ONGC official told Business Line that the company has decided on the blocks which it would start exploring by the end of this year or early next year. The focus would be more on the East coast, he said. Besides Cauvery basi n, the company is also looking at its Andaman assets and Krishna Godavari D5 block with is adjacent to RIL’s successful D6 block.

Oil discoveries

The Cauvery Basin is a proven petroliferous basin. The Cauvery basin underlies the South-Eastern coast of India and the North-Eastern coast of Sri Lanka. According to experts, it is a passive margin rift basin and several small oil discoveries in the onshore blocks have been made, the first of which began producing in 1986.

Till now more than 419 onland wells, 66 offshore wells have been already drilled resulting in 29 oil and gas discoveries (26 onshore and three offshore). The RIL discovery is the most recent one. Though for RIL it was the first venture into Cauvery, ONGC is already producing from its onshore fields in the Basin. In 2006-07 alone, ONGC produced 0.38 million tonnes of oil and 900 mscm (million standard cubic meters) of gas from its Cauvery assets.

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