Amid the government’s target to increase domestic production of crude oil and natural gas to meet the rising energy demands, state-owned Oil India is planning to drill over 75 wells in the current financial year 2024-25, the company’s chairman and managing director Ranjit Rath said on Saturday.
Last year, the company drilled 61 wells.
“From 45 to 61 wells, it represents a 35% annual growth. Also, this represents not only the number of wells but deeper and more complex wells,” Rath said.
In the last two years, we have been growing at 5-6% in terms of crude oil and natural gas production. This is on top of a natural decline (in existing production) of 12%. So, the net growth is 6%, gross growth is 18%,” he said.
Additionally, the company expects to complete the expansion of its Numaligarh refinery to 9 million tonnes per annum from the current capacity of 3 million tonnes per annum by December 2025.
The expansion plan entails installation of a 6 million tonnes per annum capacity and associated crude oil terminals and pipeline considering processing of Arab Light (AL) and Arab Heavy (AH) crude oil.
It also includes a 1,635 km long crude oil trunk line from the Paradip port in Odisha to Numaligarh in Upper Assam, to transport 5.5 million tonnes of crude oil.
“Both the projects are integrated and will be completed as part of a staged mechanical completion and staged pre-commissioning process,” Rath said. “Full scale production will take place in FY27 (2026-27).”
The CMD also informed that the ongoing unrest in Bangladesh has had no impact either on its supplies of diesel to the country through the 130 km long Indo-Bangla Friendship Pipeline or the expansion of the Numaligarh refinery.
The pipeline with a total capacity of 1 million tonne, is presently carrying 4,000 tonnes of high speed diesel from Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) in Assam to Bangladesh.
“There is no disruption of the ODC (over dimensional cargo) movement in the protocol waters,” Rath said.
Oil India is also studying the possibility of permanent carbon sequestration in its oil fields
in Rajasthan.
The company presently has a target to produce 4 million metric tonnes of crude oil annually.
“The south bank of the Brahmaputra river provides us enough opportunity to explore, and produce,” the CMD said. “We continue to maintain the reserve-replace ratio at more or less 1.” He noted that the company is producing oil and gas from deeper wells, at an average depth of 3,000-4,500 metres, against the earlier depth of 2,000-3,500 metres.
“In a first, we evaluated a seven-rig bid in just 48 hours, to have a turnaround. If we don’t have rig count, we can’t have deep exploration and development,” he said.
From: financialexpress
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