 "Centre aims big for Assam oil sector, to make it petro-hub of SE Asia")
The Centre has prepared a roadmap for investing Rs 6,000 crore through public sector oil companies in Assam’s petroleum sector in the current fiscal. This will be a part of the total Rs 80,000 crore investment that the oil companies will be making by 2030 in the state as part of Centre’s ambitious plan to make Assam the petroleum hub of Southeast Asia.
Union minister of petroleum and natural gas, Dharmendra Pradhan, today said the Centre aims to make the Northeastern state of Assam a hydrocarbon hub to meet petroleum requirements of Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and other Southeast Asian countries. The Rs 6,000-crore investment that has been lined up for this fiscal would be primarily invested in exploration and production and increasing pipeline network across the state.
By 2030, the government plans to take the oil and gas production in Assam to 9.4 million metric tonnes of oil equivalent (MMTOE) and create a 5,000 km ‘mega’ petroleum pipeline grid across the region.
“Presently, one fourth of Assam’s revenue comes from the oil sector and our plan is to double and triple it by 2030 through our investment and expansion plans. We have prepared a roadmap to invest Rs 6,000 crore in this fiscal in the state’s oil sector and Rs 80,000 by 2030,” Pradhan said.
He added: “We have already started exporting petroleum products to Bangladesh from Assam’s Numaligarh refinery. We will leverage the region’s hydrocarbon potential to make Assam a hub to meet the petroleum requirements of Bhutan, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Southeast Asia in the near future. We are preparing plans for that.”
In the Northeast, there are two hydrocarbon basins, namely — Upper Assam basin and Assam-Arakan basin. The Upper Assam basin covers the plans of Upper Assam and parts of Arunachal Pradesh whereas the Assam-Arakan basin covers the hilly terrains of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura. The Upper Assam basin is well explored (around 90%) and current production of oil and gas is mainly from here. The Assam-Arakan fold belt has substantial gas reserves and only 10% of it has been explored yet.
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Public sector oil companies that are engaged in exploration and production in Assam and other Northeastern states are Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Oil India (OIL) and the private players are Geo Enpro, Jubilant Energy, Assam Company, Essar Oil and Dart Energy.
“We today had a detailed discussion with the Union petroleum and natural gas minister and also with top officials of public sector oil companies. The Centre has agreed to undertake a slew of measures to address the issues of oil sector of Assam and to strengthen it,” said Sarbanada Sonowal, chief minister of Assam.
The Centre is also working on increasing the total refining capacity of oil refineries in Assam. The state has four refineries, situated at Digboi, Numaligarh, Guwahati and Bongaigaon, with total capacity of 7 million metric tonnes per annum (MMTPA). Pradhan said the government will increase total refining capacity to 16 MMTPA in the coming years.
In view of the refinery expansion plans, the government will import crude from Nigeria to feed Assam’s refineries. “The refineries would need more crude in the future in view of expansion plans. We plan to import crude from Nigeria and West Africa to feed them. The crude will be imported to Paradip port via sea and then will be brought to the state via Barauni in Bihar,” the Union minister said. He also urged the state government to relax entry tax on imported crude to help the refineries grow.
Current average crude oil production from the region is around 12,444 tonne per day (TPD) and average gas production is around 11.32 million metric standard cubic metre per day (MMSCMD). The share of Northeast to India’s total oil production and gas production in 2014-15 was 12.1% and 12.2%, respectively. The total production of oil in 2014-15 was 4.54 million metric tonne (MMT) and gas production was 4.13 billion cubic metres (BCM).