The Union Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given its approval for the National Offshore Exploration Scheme named “Samudra Manthan”, having an aggregate budget of ₹84,084 crore. The scheme will be run by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas till 2030-31.
This is the largest offshore oil and gas exploration project in India to date, and its objective is to enhance crude oil and natural gas production in the country. India is the third-largest consumer of crude oil in the world and spends approximately ₹13 lakh crore annually on oil imports. This is due to growing energy demand, along with global tensions impacting oil supply.
The past couple of years have seen many reforms from the government, such as allowing more offshore areas to be explored, streamlining contract agreements, amending laws and regulations, and incentivising companies such as ONGC and Oil India to concentrate more on exploration. Under the Samudra Manthan scheme, the government has promised to offer funding up to 50% of the cost involved in exploring deepwater wells.
This plan is based on deepwater and ultra-deepwater blocks like Krishna-Godavari, Cauvery, Mahanadi, and Andaman that contain huge oil and gas deposits. Total investments will consist of ₹28,534 crore for acquiring and processing state-of-the-art seismic data from offshore areas, ₹43,200 crore for drilling sixty deepwater exploratory wells, ₹10,000 crore for the development of common offshore infrastructure, and ₹2,000 crore for establishing oil and gas manufacturing and service zones for fostering domestic manufacturing of equipment.
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Furthermore, around ₹350 crore will be spent on monitoring, IT-related aspects, awareness, and support programs. If there are positive results in terms of exploration, the plan targets increasing India’s oil and gas production from 62 MMTOE to 80 MMTOE and India’s hydrocarbon endowment from 1.6 billion TOE to 2.2 billion TOE. It would also help reduce India’s crude oil imports by almost ₹1 lakh crore per year.
