ONGC to drill deep along Kerala coast

By C.V. Gopalakrishnan

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, APRIL 9. The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) will commence offshore drilling in the Kerala-Konkan coast later this year after the South-West monsoon recedes. The drilling will be carried out to a depth of 700 metres by its Sagar Vijay which will be anchored at an ocean site from which it will pierce the surface below the water depth of anywhere between 1.5 to 2 km.

The ONGC will be participating in a major international oil exploration in Russia's Sakhalin Islands involving a total investment of around Rs.9,000 crores. The New Exploration Licensing Policy provides for the choice of foreign partners for offshore exploration. The terms for participation in the latest offshore projects providing for joint ventures with foreign parties was signed between the ONGC and the Ministry of Petroleum on March 31 this year.

The most exacting part of the drilling operations is the stabilising of the drilling ship in a rough marine environment. The hi-tech deployed for the drilling operations in the Kerala coast will be the dynamic positioning of Sagar Vijay for imparting the required stability for the ship. The ONGC is likely to go into joint venture for the Kerala-Konkan offshore project with Schlumberger of the U.S. and the technology it would be providing is rated as the best in the world. Sagar Vijay itself has developed the knowhow for drilling up to 900 m deep into water.

Resorting to deep-sea drilling is said to be the only choice for the ONGC in Kerala since the seismic exploration carried out so far does not seem to have held out any hopes for shallow-water operations close to the coast. The drilling of a single well in the Kerala-Konkan and Krishna-Godavari offshore basins is estimated to cost Rs. 40 crores.

The offshore seismic data obtained over a twenty-year period in the Kerala-Konkan offshore basin spreads over 1.25 lakh line km, with the ONGC claiming the major share of about 1,12,000 km, followed by the Western Geophysical and the

Geophysical Services International Inc., both of U.S. respectively with 9,898 km and 2,300 km. The well data obtained from Kasargod showed only the presence of gas and oil fluoresence. The offers made to foreign parties for exploration included four deep and one shallow-water blocks. The data offered to the bidders include definition of the block, geoscientific surveys carried out earlier, facts gathered from earlier exploratory drilling, etc.

The petroleum geology surveys carried out by the ONGC revealed the presence of petroleum carbonates and sandstones within ``eocene to middle miocene sediments'' indicating only the age of the subterranean formations and they throw no light on the presence of the hydrocarbons of oil or gas which might exist in the inter-bedded shales which are soft, finely stratified rocks, consolidated mud or clay.

The foreign parties to which the willingness of the Government to sign contracts for oil exploration was made known include Oakland Oil Company, Rexwood Corporation, Samson Int., Opseis Geological System Inc., Shell, Mobil, Joshi Technologies Inc., and Medallion Oil Company of U.S.. Cairn Energy of India Private Ltd., (formerly Command Petroleum of Australia) and Tullow Oil Pic. of Ireland.

The Indian companies participating in the oil exploration programme are Videocon Industries, Tata Petrodyne, Essar Oil, Phoneix Overseas Ltd., Hindustan Oil Exploration Company, Gen.Fibres (P) India and Larsen & Toubro Ltd.

Apart from the Kerala-Konkan offshore region, the other area identified for deep-water exploration is the Kutch basin. The Indian Oil Corporation, which has so far been involved in the management of petroleum refineries, is also said to be queueing for participation in exploration along with the ONGC along with Enterprise Oil of the U.K.

While the ONGC seems to have persuaded Schlumberger of U.S. for a joint venture for exploration in the Kerala offshore project for providing deep sea drilling technology, the foreign bidders are generally more interested in coming as partners in the operations in areas where oil has already been discovered by the ONGC.

The roping in of private firms, both foreign and Indian, for participation in exploration projects either by themselves or in joint venture programmes with the ONGC/Oil India seems to have assumed an urgency because of the steep decline in oil production from nearly 35 million tonnes in the early 1980s to not more than 26 million tonnes in 1999-2000 though the production of natural gas has gone up from 12 million to 18 million tonnes during the same period.

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