Essar Oil plans to invest around $140 million over the next four years hunting for oil and gas in its assets acquired overseas, senior company official said.
"Most of the investment will be in the Vietnam block and the two newly-acquired offshore blocks in Australia," the official said. He said the company proposes to invest $60 million in the gas-bearing offshore Block 114 in Vietnam's Song Hong Basin and $65 million in the two shallow-water blocks in Bonaparte Basin in northern Australia.
The Ruias' promoted company also plans to invest another $15 million on scouting for oil and gas in its three onshore blocks covering 30,000 sq km in Morondava Basin of Madagascar.
The Vietnam block was awarded to Essar Exploration & Production, a subsidiary of Essar Oil, earlier this year under a licensing round.
The block covers around 5,925 sq km and is located at water depth of 60-70m, with early estimates indicating reserves of 2-3 trillion cu ft natural gas. "As per the minimum work programme, we have to undertake geological and geophysical studies, acquisition, processing and interpretation of fresh 3D seismic and drill two exploration wells," the official said.
He said the exploration phase for the block is five years.
In Australia, Essar Exploration got two blocks--NT/P77 and NT/P78--last month.
"We have a committed work programme of undertaking 3D seismic surveying and other studies along with drilling of one exploration well in each of the blocks at an estimated investment of around $65 million," the official said.
Essar Exploration plans to soon launch drilling operations in the three onshore blocks in Madagascar, together estimated to hold in-place oil reserves of around 1 billion barrels.
The company has updated the data on the Madagascar blocks, and has completed acquisition of 12,000-line km of aeromagnetic surveys.
