KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – India’s national oil and natural gas exploration and production (E&P) major, ONGC Limited, expects to achieve 190-million tons of incremental crude oil production through adoption of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) across 29 of its projects.

“There is significant scope to increase production through EOR technologies in mature fields. ONGC has been a pioneer in implementation of EOR technologies in both onshore and offshore fields. Presently, adoption of EOR contributes 9% of total onshore production of the company,” ONGC chairperson Shashi Shanker said in the group’s financial statements.

ONGC is currently implementing various EOR technologies across in oil and gas fields in Gujarat, Assam and Mumbai.

The imperative of rapid adoption of EOR to achieve higher production comes against the backdrop of ONGC crude oil production during April to June 2019, declining by 7% to 8.20-million tons equivalent, compared with the corresponding period of the previous year, resulting in India’s oil import dependency rising to 85.2% from 83.8% in the corresponding period of the previous year.

ONGC’s total crude oil production during 2018/19 fell to a 16-year low at 21.042-million tons from a high of 26.485-million tons achieved in 2004/05.

According to Shanker, ONGC has earmarked capital expenditure (capex) of an estimated $4.07-billion in 2019/20, an increase of 12% over the previous financial year, to part fund ongoing projects worth $11.85-billion at 15 projects at various stages of implementation.

He said that the company completed ten E&P projects during 2018/19 entailing total capex of $1.60-billion, besides focusing on ramping up production through development of greenfield projects, while attempting to increase yields from mature fields in its portfolio.

The adoption of EOR is also significant in light of the government’s earlier plans to hive off 64 of ONGC’s oil and natural gas fields to private investors following sustained failure to increase production from these assets. The plan was subsequently put on the backburner in the face of opposition from the national oil major and its fresh commitment to invite new joint venture partners with the technologies to increase production from these suboptimally performing assets.