Business

Board nod for ONGC investment plan

NEW DELHI: Faced with declining production from its oil and gas fields, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) on Monday approved an investment plan of Rs. 3,570.60 crore for maintaining, revamping and enhancing oil and gas production from the existing fields. The approved outlay includes ONGC’s share of cost of development of Cairn India operated oil blocks in Rajasthan.

According to an official statement here, ONGC will invest Rs. 1,804 crore in the development of four fields — Mangala, Aishwariya, Raageshwari and Saraswati (MARS) — in Rajasthan along with Cairn Energy, which holds 70 per cent in the blocks. These fields are expected to produce 286.41 million barrels of oil till 2020, of which ONGC’s share will be 85.92 million barrels.

Other projects include processing facilities of Heera reconstruction project so that the platform could last for another 15-20 years with an estimated cost of Rs. 475 crore. ONGC will also invest Rs. 305 crore to revamp Neelam reconstruction project to cater to the changed production profile and to process high sulphur content crude.

For improved reservoir management of Mumbai High North Field on the Arabian Sea, water injection, infrastructure would be enhanced necessitating revamping of WIN platform with a total cost of Rs. 333.80 crore. ONGC will also invest Rs. 289.60 crore as a risk mitigation measure for the unmanned well-head platforms of Mumbai High asset. The company also announced it had achieved highest reserve accretion of the decade. An investment of Rs. 169 crore was also approved for various alternative and renewable energy sources projects. The company has made seven new oil and gas discoveries in April but they were not significant in nature.

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