New Delhi: India is witnessing a renewed surge in oil and gas exploration with the opening of nearly one million square kilometres of erstwhile ‘No-Go’ offshore areas in 2022, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Hardeep Singh Puri, informed the Parliament on Tuesday.
“This move has unlocked significant exploration frontiers, especially in deepwater and frontier regions such as the Andaman-Nicobar (AN) offshore basin, and has been instrumental in triggering the current momentum in offshore activity,” the minister said in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha.
Since 2015, Exploration and Production (E&P) companies operating in India have reported 172 hydrocarbon discoveries, including 62 in offshore areas. The minister highlighted the geological significance of the AN basin, which lies at the junction of the Andaman and Nicobar Basins within the Bengal-Arakan sedimentary system.
The tectonic setting, located at the boundary of the Indian and Burmese plates, has led to the formation of numerous stratigraphic traps that are conducive to hydrocarbon accumulation. This geological promise is further amplified by the basin’s proximity to proven petroleum systems in Myanmar and North Sumatra. The region has attracted renewed global interest following significant gas discoveries in South Andaman offshore Indonesia, underlining the geological continuity across the region, the minister said.
While the favourable geology sets a strong foundation, Puri emphasised that the real breakthrough has come from the government’s strategic policy interventions and a new exploration approach. The revised strategy has enabled aggressive acquisition of seismic data, initiation of both stratigraphic and exploratory drilling, and increased engagement with international exploration partners, several of whom have shown keen interest in the newly accessible frontier blocks, he stated.
In a significant development, ONGC and Oil India Ltd (OIL) have launched an ambitious exploration campaign in the Andaman ultra-deepwater region. For the first time, drilling operations are targeting depths of up to 5,000 metres. One such wildcat well, ANDW-7, drilled in a carbonate play in the East Andaman Back Arc region, has yielded encouraging geological insights. These include traces of light crude and condensate in cutting samples, heavy hydrocarbons like C-5 neo-pentane in trip gases, the minister further stated.
These findings establish, for the first time, the existence of an active thermogenic petroleum system in the region, comparable to those in Myanmar and North Sumatra. While commercial reserves remain to be established, this campaign has validated the presence of a working petroleum system and laid the foundation for focused exploration in the area, the minister said.
Providing an overview of the exploration outcomes so far, the minister informed that the ONGC has made hydrocarbon discoveries in 20 blocks, with an estimated reserve of 75 million metric tonnes of oil equivalent (MMTOE). OIL, on its part, has made seven oil and gas discoveries over the past four years, with reserves estimated at 9.8 million barrels of oil and 2,706.3 million standard cubic meters of gas.
