ONGC May Benefit from Indo-Norway Cooperation in O&G Sector

ONGC

ONGC may benefit from the current bilateral developments between the Indian and Norwegian governments in the area of deepwater deepwater development.

Norwegian companies are among the most impressive operators in the offshore Oil & Gas business. The ability of companies such as Statoil and Norsk Hydro, to innovate cutting-edge technology in offshore industry, is well-established. Some of the oil-field engineering feats achieved by Norwegian companies include horizontal drilling, 3D seismology, floater and sub-sea technology.

ONGC, the operator of 28 deepwater exploration blocks (19 of which have been awarded to it in the four rounds of competitive bidding under NELP), has staked a sizeable investment for exploring the blocks, the prognosticated resources in which are estimated to be around 7 billion tons of Oil Equivalent.

ONGC is eyeing an accretion of 4 billion tons of In-place reserves from these, which, considering the current average recovery factor of around 30 per cent, may lead to a production of a little more than one billion tonne of Oil Equivalent. Advanced Norwegian technologies may help it to monetize the deepwater resources faster and more cost-effectively.

The first meeting of the Indo-Norwegian Joint Working Group (JWG) on cooperation in Hydrocarbon sector, held on December 2 at New Delhi, defined a broad portfolio of opportunities for cooperation, in which Exploration of Production (E&P) of Oil & Gas was identified as one of the most potent areas for commercial partnerships. Representatives of both the governments agreed that cooperation can bring in mutual benefits in additional areas like Satellite Field development, Sea-bed processing for platform development, Improved recovery and marginal field operations, Multilateral well completion, Down-hole separation to knockout water, Real-time reservoir management improvement, and Exploration-Production & Transportation of Gas Hydrates.

The next meeting of this Joint Working Group on Hydrocarbon sector is slated at Oslo in Norway, in March 2005, in which ONGC's Director (Offshore) Mr. N K Mitra will participate.

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