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New Delhi: This year, state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) finally managed to reverse the decline in domestic natural gas production by posting a record 6.5 percent jump in output. In the fiscal that ended on March 31, the oil PSU's total natural gas production from ONGC-operated nomination fields, NELP blocks and joint venture assets stood at 25.9 billion cubic meters (BCM) as opposed to 24.61 BCM in the previous fiscal. "Some of our gas fields are very old like the Bassien field in western offshore. These continue to make a substantial contribution to the overall domestic production of gas because of continuous monitoring of the fields, applications of state-of-the-art technology and best possible reservoir management," CMD Shashi Shanker said. The PSU is now aiming to push its production to 42 BCM by end of fiscal 2022, as its KG basin discoveries come onstream, the CMD said.
The growth rate was higher than the global average of 3-4 percent year-on-year. The month of November in the last fiscal saw the highest-ever gas production in the six-decade-old history of the oil PSU as production reached 71 million standard cubic meters per day (mmscmd). The rise in production can be attributed to C-26 Cluster fields, Daman and Vasai East fields in the western offshore as well as sub-sea well S2AB in the eastern offshore, Shanker said. He added that gas sales in 2018-19 also saw an impressive rise as sales stood at 20.472 BCM against the sales of 19.494 BCM in 2017-18.
ONGC now plans to invest Rs 57,000 crores — which makes for one of the highest investments in the world in gas projects — in the high potential KG-DWN-98/2 project in the Bay of Bengal and on developing other discoveries located off the west coast.
