ONGC eastern offshore gas output may go up by Sept

State-owned ONGC Ltd expects to ramp up natural gas production up to 2 million metric standard cubic meters per day (mmscd) during the next financial year as two of its eastern offshore wells are set to get into production.

 

Ashok Varma, Executive Director (Asset Manager) Eastern Offshore Asset, said the oil and gas major has chalked out a programme to take up drilling of 40 to 45 wells by 2019.

 

The eastern offshore wing of the public sector undertakinngs has also sent proposals to hire four more rigs to meet the requirements.

 

"With these two wells, the total production from the eastern offshore will be about two million cubic meters gas. These are gas fields. We get very little oil which is negligible. As of now we are getting 6.5 lakh cubic meters of gas and 50 cubic meters of oil from the eastern offshore wells per day," Varma told PTI.

 

The additional gas production expects to give a fillip to the company's topline as C Rangarajan's gas pricing formula is expected to come into force from April.

 

Barclays Equity Research had earlier estimated that the price will be $ 8.3 per million British thermal unit in 2014-15 as against the current rate of $ 4.2. This will rise to $ 9.1 in the following year and then to $ 9.4 in 2016-17.

 

Varma added that these two wells are located in G1 and S1 fields, which are situated around 28 km from the shore.

 

ONGC, which has 24 blocks in KG Basin, currently produces 840 tonnes of oil per day and 3.8 mscd of gas from its onshore blocks, a senior official of ONGC had earlier said.