'Net production from Bombay High is rising'

Bombay High, India's largest offshore oil field, accounts for 38 per cent of the domestic production. Though it is known that production from the field owned by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) is declining, what is not known is that there is a "net" increase in production, due to improved recovery technologies, which are also boosting production in other fields. N K Mitra (pictured), director, offshore, ONGC, talks to Sumana Guha Ray. Excerpts:

Production from existing wells is said to be falling. Is this scenario expected to improve?

The rate of recovery from wells in India is around 28 per cent at present. However, with hi-tech drilling and implementation of other advanced technology, this could be increased to 40 per cent by 2020. Recovery from wells has already increased in certain areas from 300 to 400 barrels of oil a day to 800 to 1,000 barrels a day.

Is the production at Bombay High declining?

With time, and repeated extraction from the same wells, production volumes naturally decline. However, more drilling is taking place at Bombay High and rotary steerable tools are being used to drill horizontal wells to increase reach to reserves. Therefore, there is a 7-8 per cent natural decrease in production volume. There has been an increase in volumes by 10 to 12 per cent through improved recovery technology. Thus, the net production has been on the rise from Bombay High.

You are also looking at developing marginal oil fields...

With oil prices rising to more than $60 a barrel in the market, developing these fields would definitely be viable. Prices are no longer below $20 a barrel to make these fields unviable for development. We are developing 29 of these fields in cluster formation. This means that we will connect them to bigger fields such as Bombay High through a network of pipelines. Therefore, there would be no need to develop separate infrastructure for these fields alone. We expect 15 million metric standard cubic metres per day of gas from our offshore marginal fields alone and 16 million metric tonnes of oil.

But, ONGC seems to be lagging private sector companies such as Reliance Industries when it comes to new finds, although ONGC has been in this business much longer.

Being a public sector undertaking, we do not have the freedom to buy technology whenever we want. Reliance has the advantage of buying the latest technology off the market whenever they need it. Our procedures are prolonged and this is affecting the new discoveries.