Moily wants reassessment of India's oil and gas potential

With a two-decade old estimate of oil and gas reserves in India becoming outdated, Oil Minister M Veerappa Moily has set up a multi-organisational team to reassess the country's hydrocarbon resources.

 

The Multi-Organisation Team or MOT will reassess the potential of all 26 sedimentary basins in the country in light of the oil and gas discoveries since 2001.

 

The previous such exercise was undertaken two decades ago, when 15 sedimentary basins were studied. That estimation put India's oil and gas resource potential at a fraction of the 206 billion barrels of oil and oil-equivalent gas assessed by the International Energy Agency (IEA) last year.

 

MOT will comprise of exploration heads of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd and will also have an official from the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH), an oil ministry statement said.

 

"With the increase in exploration spread and quantum jump in availability of geo-scientific data generated under New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) there is a need to revisit the Hydrocarbon Resource assessment of India," it said.

 

A full-scale revision is overdue in view of the vast amount of data collected since the previous exercise.

 

"There is also an urgent need for the fresh estimation in the remaining 11 sedimentary basins as well, for which no hydrocarbon resources have been estimated so far," it said.

 

The MOT has been asked to estimate the resources of all 3.14 million square kilometres of the 26 sedimentary basins of India and prepare a basin-wise portfolio.

 

The team will carry out the resource assessment at ONGC's Keshav Dev Majviy Institute of Petroleum Exploration (KDMIPE) in Dehradun.

 

A National Steering Committee has been set up to periodically review the work done by KDMIPE. The panel will be headed by the Oil Secretary and will include the Director General of Hydrocarbons, exploration heads of ONGC and OIL and the head of the KDMIPE.

 

"The process of hydrocarbon resource estimation of different basins being sequential, there will be quarterly review meetings by MOT for assessing the progress," the statement said.

 

KDMIPE will utilise the geo-scientific data available with them and the DGH to assess the resources.

 

The DGH will be responsible for providing all the resource assessment related data of NELP and pre-NELP blocks, operated by various E&P companies.

 

Data confidentially will be maintained by KDMIPE, it added.