 "ONGC plans to invest $10-15 billion in East Coast")
Speaking to Businesss Standard on the sidelines of L&T's hightech spool base facilities at Katupalli, near Chennai, T K Sengupta, director (offshore), ONGC, said currently the country's gas requirement was around 75 billion cubic metres a year, of which around 50 per cent was contributed by ONGC.
Commenting on the project launched by L&T, he said: "For our deep water campaign, this is a very significant step because we are going towards a gas-based economy, for which it is very important to prepare ourselves for the future challenges".
He said he was confident about the ability of the consortium to deliver such a complicated project on schedule, commence production by mid-2017 and achieve full capacity of 2 billion cubic metres of gas per annum by the end of 2017.
Very few companies in the world have the expertise to execute projects of the nature L&T has taken up on an EPC basis. A project of such magnitude is being executed in deep water for the first time in India in the Eastern Offshore Fields of ONGC. This will set a benchmark in project delivery milestones, execution efficiency and excellence. This was a landmark project, in line with the 'Make in India' and 'Skill India' policies of the government, along with technology transfer from McDermott, he added.
Today, oil production in the country is stagnated, even as the future lies in gas production. In the next five years, huge developments will take place and ONGC will play a key role. East Coast of India has got a huge potential and the company is planning to invest $10-15 billion in exploration in East Coast alone.
The company hopes to enhance its production of gas to 5 billion cubic metres, and of oil to 3.5 MMT a year.