Aiyar bets on gas reserves off Bay of Bengal

Union minister of petroleum & natural gas, on Sunday, advocated exploration of the huge gas reserves off the Bay of Bengal from Tamil Nadu coast to Myanmar coast for self-reliance in fuel supplies and less dependence on imported crude oil.

After inaugurating the LPG bottling plant of BPCL at Solur village, about 40km from Bangalore, Aiyar said there was an urgent need to substitute oil with natural gas as prospects of discovering oil was limited and the self-reliance ratio in oil production was declining.

"Our self-reliance in oil production is currently about 30 per cent against 50 per cent two decades ago. With oil discovery and production in the country growing at just 7-8 per cent annually, the self-reliance ratio may decline to 15 per cent in the next decade. In such a scenario, we need to concentrate on tapping the gas reserves off the Bay of Bengal right from Tamil Nadu coast to North-East and Mynmar coast, including the Bangladesh coast," Aiyar said.

Aiyar called for greater investments in exploration and production of natural gas across the eastern coast. He said though Reliance had discovered one of the largest gas reserves in the Krishna-Godavari basin off the Andhra coast, similar reserves were found in Mahanadi basin off the Orissa coast, Sunderbans in West Bengal and in the North East.

"Preliminary explorations indicate Bangladesh is floating on a lake of natural gas. It is being dubbed as the future Qatar of South Asia. GAIL, OVL (Oil Videsh Ltd) of ONGC have discovered huge gas reserves in A-1 and A-3 blocks off the coast of Myanmar in Bay of Bengal. Similarly, off the Tamil Nadu coast at PY-1 and PY-3 (Pondicherry) gas reserves have been identified. So much gas is available off the eastern coast that Bay of Bengal has the potential to emerge as the North Sea of East in future," Aiyar disclosed.

Aiyar also suggested enlarging the scope of the recent MoU signed by the Karnataka government with the ONGC for jointly setting up the coastal special economic zone in Mangalore at an estimated cost of Rs 25,000 crore in the next 3-5 years.

With the commissioning of the Bangalore LPG plant, BPCL has enhanced its fuel product capacity to 110 MTPA, including 44MTPA at Mangalore and 22MTPA at Dharwad.