As the West Asia conflict impresses upon power hungry countries to secure energy supplies, state-run ONGC will be spending ₹20,000 crore annually till March 2030.
The country’s largest E&P firm aims to explore not just onshore fields for oil and gas, but is exploring the Deep and Ultradeep waters of the Mahanadi basin and Andaman & Nicobar islands, with likely foreign collaboration on commercial and technical aspects.
Speaking at media interaction, post the company’s AGM on Monday, ONGC Chairman A K Singh said that the company aims to spend Rs 1 lakh crore till FY30 on scaling deepwater exploration to unlock India’s next hydrocarbon frontier.
The Maharatna company, which is faced with constantly declining oil and gas production due to maturing fields, has already roped in BP as the technical services provider (TSP) to raise production from Mumbai High and Western Offshore basin fields.
Overall, the E&P major will drill more than 350 wells till 2030 covering both onshore and offshore. It will begin with drilling 8 deepwater wells till March 2027 and add another 10 till March 2028.
The company is drilling with a rig currently and expects to add another rig that will be leased in the next three months.
“A big frontier is deep and ultra deepwater, this is a huge area for India. Our sedimentary basin is bigger than Brazil. One of the things we need to do is explore deepwater wells,” Singh said.
The company has set a capex target for FY27 at ₹30,000 crore, of which it has earmarked ₹9,055 crore for development drilling and ₹6,095 crore for exploratory drilling.
ONGC is likely to set up its international crude and products trading platform by December 2026 with Dubai and Singapore under consideration as its base.
“We are very close to it (setting up a trading desk). Already 95 per cent work is done. We are waiting for one or two boxes to be ticked,” Singh said.