Four largely unexplored sedimentary basins in India – Mahanadi, Andaman Sea, Bengal, and Kerala-Konkan – are estimated to have a hydrocarbon potential of approximately twenty-two billion barrels of oil equivalent, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights.
Recent discoveries by global exploration companies in the North-Sumatra basin, located in Indonesian waters near the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, have highlighted the Andaman Sea as a key area for frontier exploration.
In the past three to four years, there has been a notable shift towards deep-water and ultra-deep-water areas by global exploration companies seeking significant discoveries. The trend has brought attention to India’s category-II and category-III basins.
Harbour Energy and Mubadala’s recent discoveries in the North-Sumatra Basin have underscored the Andaman Sea’s potential for frontier exploration. Rahul Chauhan, upstream analyst at Commodity Insights stated, “ONGC and Oil India hold acreages in the Andaman waters under the Open Acreage Licensing Program (OALP) and have planned several significant projects. However, India still awaits the participation of an international oil company with deepwater and ultra-deepwater exploration expertise in current and future OALP bidding rounds”.
Currently, only about ten percent of India’s 3.36 million square kilometres of sedimentary basins are under exploration. The government aims to increase this to sixteen percent by the end of 2024, although this is still far from the target of having one million square kilometres under exploration by 2030. Notably, the government has already reduced the No-Go areas in India’s exclusive economic zone by almost 99 percent.
The OALP allows upstream companies to identify and propose areas for oil and gas exploration throughout the year, with expressions of interest accumulated thrice annually and the proposed areas subsequently auctioned.
As reported by business-standard.com, exploration and production activities in India’s oil and gas sector are expected to offer investment opportunities worth $100 billion by 2030.
