Moving to re-assess the oil and gas potential of the country, Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Veerappa Moily on Monday announced setting up of a Multi Organisation Team (MOT) to carry out the re-assessment of hydrocarbon resources in all 26 sedimentary basins.
The assessment is to be completed within 30 months. The Keshav Dev Malviya Institute of Petroleum Engineering (KDMIPE) of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) will act as MOT leader with the Director (Exploration) of the ONGC being its chairman, and the Director (Exploration & Development) of Oil India Ltd (OIL) as the co-chairman. A National Level Committee headed by the Petroleum Secretary will monitor and review the progress of work periodically, an official statement said.
The last such exercise was carried out in 15 sedimentary basins about two decades ago and is overdue for a full-scale revision in view of the vast amount of data collected since then. There is also an urgent need for the fresh estimation in the remaining 11 sedimentary basins as well, for which no hydrocarbon resources have been estimated so far.
During the course of implementation of pre-NELP (New Exploration Licensing Policy) and NELP rounds and other exploration and production activities, substantial geo-scientific data have been acquired and interpreted. New oil and gas fields have also been discovered by utilising improved geological understanding and new technology. With the increase in exploration spread and quantum jump in availability of geo-scientific data generated under the NELP, it was felt there is a need to revisit the hydrocarbon resource assessment of India.
The MOT has been asked to estimate the resources of all 3.14 million square kilometres of the 26 sedimentary basins of India and prepare a basin-wise portfolio. The Director-General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) will be responsible for providing all the resource assessment-related data of the NELP and pre-NELP blocks, operated by various E&P companies. Data confidentially will be maintained by KDMIPE.
