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Raghuvir Srinivasan

A SHORT, 45-minute helicopter ride away from Mumbai is the Mumbai High oil field, the heart of the country's oil map. Though popularly known as Mumbai High, the region actually consists of three major assets — Mumbai High, Neelam and Heera, and Bassein (Vasai) and satellite fields.

Discovered almost three decades ago, the Mumbai High oil field last year produced about 17.56 million tonnes of oil accounting for about 67 per cent of ONGC's total production and 53 per cent of the total oil produced in the country.

The Neelam and Heera field, which also includes the B-173 field, went into production in the early 1980s. The Heera field alone has about 160 producing wells and a complex network of 46 sub-sea pipelines aggregating to a total length of 222 km connecting the wells to the processing platforms.

The field yields about 82,000 barrels of oil (about 3.9 million tonnes per annum) and 4.5 million metric standard cubic metres of gas per day and is linked to Uran on land by pipeline. Recently, the Heera field achieved zero gas flaring which means that 100 per cent of the gas production is tapped and unlike a normal field, no gas is flared.

Operating an offshore platform is a mammoth logistical exercise in terms of manpower and other resources. The platform is manned by 15-day shifts while material supplies done on more regular basis. The working conditions are quite challenging, especially during the monsoon, like now. The sea gets rather rough and landing supplies on the platform from supply vessels can be a challenging task indeed as this correspondent witnessed.

And this is a normal field with wells that are about 1,800 metres deep from mean sea level. The working conditions on a deep-sea platform can well be imagined as it deals with depths of 3,000 metres (effectively 3 km) and above. Yet, it is in such deep-sea fields that the future of India's oil sector lies.

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