New Delhi, Aug 11 (IANS) Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) plans to invest over Rs 4,600 crore to drill more wells to increase production from its discovered fields, lay an offshore pipeline, and set up a gas processing facility in the coastal Konaseema district of Andhra Pradesh.

The public sector upstream oil giant sought the approval of the Ministry of Environment and Forests for the project and has been asked to carry out a biodiversity assessment to evaluate the impact of drilling activities and prepare an environmental restoration action plan to go ahead with the project, a senior official said.

The ONGC field is located 35 kilometres off the coast of Andhra Pradesh in water depths ranging from 300-3,200 metres. The discoveries of oil and gas in the block are divided into three clusters— Clusters 1, 2, and 3 across an area of 697 sq km.

ONGC has recently increased production from its flagship deep-sea project in the Krishna Godavari basin off the Andhra Pradesh coast, which will help augment the production of crude oil and natural gas

The upstream oil company is focused on raising production in the second half of FY25 (2024-25) by reducing the turnaround time for opening wells, the official said.

“Three oil wells of A-field of deepwater block KG basin block KG-DWN-98/2 were opened on October 30, 2024, thereby enhancing total oil production to about 25,000 barrels of oil per day from eight flowing wells of cluster-II. The remaining five oil wells are planned to be opened shortly,” ONGC said in an exchange filing recently.

In a significant development, ONGC and Oil India Ltd (OIL) have also launched an ambitious exploration campaign in the Andaman ultra-deepwater region. For the first time, drilling operations are targeting depths of up to 5,000 metres. One such wildcat well, ANDW-7, drilled in a carbonate play in the East Andaman Back Arc region, has yielded encouraging geological insights. These include traces of light crude and condensate in cutting samples, heavy hydrocarbons like C-5 neo-pentane in trip gases, the government had said.

These findings establish, for the first time, the existence of an active thermogenic petroleum system in the region, comparable to those in Myanmar and North Sumatra. While commercial reserves remain to be established, this campaign has validated the presence of a working petroleum system and laid the foundation for focused exploration in the area, Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri has told Parliament.

ONGC has made hydrocarbon discoveries in 20 blocks, with an estimated reserve of 75 million metric tonnes of oil equivalent (MMTOE). Oil India Ltd., on its part, has made seven oil and gas discoveries over the past four years, with reserves estimated at 9.8 million barrels of oil and 2,706.3 million standard cubic meters of gas, the minister stated.

–IANS

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