Oil India to Invest ₹15,000 Crore in Deepwater and Ultra-Deepwater Exploration Across Four Offshore Basins
Oil India Limited is planning to allocate around ₹15,000 crore over the next three years for deepwater exploration wells, Chairman and Managing Director Ranjit Rath said. The proposed investment will focus on deepwater and ultra-deepwater blocks across four offshore basins: Andaman, Krishna-Godavari, Mahanadi and Kerala-Konkan.
Rath described the ₹15,000 crore allocation as a preparedness budget rather than a fixed drilling schedule. The company has acquired approximately 48,000 sq km of deepwater and ultra-deepwater acreage, including two blocks each in the Krishna-Godavari and Mahanadi basins. Oil India has completed 2D and 3D seismic surveys across these blocks and is currently processing the resulting data, while also reprocessing older seismic data using updated technologies. The company's overall exploration footprint now covers more than 1 lakh sq km.
The deepwater exploration strategy is supported by the government's Samudra Manthan scheme, which provides partial financial support for eligible deepwater and ultra-deepwater exploration activities, helping offset the financial exposure associated with exploratory drilling.
Separately, Oil India is expanding its clean energy portfolio, including solar power and compressed biogas, drawing on the government's GOBARdhan scheme, under which ₹23,731 crore of financial support has been approved for India's compressed biogas sector.
