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India’s largest exploration and production firm, state-held Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) has hired supermajor BP to be the technical services provider of its efforts to boost production at India’s biggest oilfield, ONGC said on Wednesday.
India has been looking to increase its domestic oil and gas output in a bid to reduce its high dependence on imports. Currently, India, the world’s third-largest crude oil importer, relies on imports to cover more than 80% of its daily consumption of oil.
BP, for its part, has been present in India for decades and has been looking to boost its presence in both the upstream and downstream sectors in the country which is replacing China as the key driver of global oil demand growth.
Last year, BP’s board held a meeting in India as its BP board was on a five-day visit, which “reflects BP’s significant and growing presence in India and its commitment to further develop its businesses in and with the country.”
India’s state corporation ONGC issued last year an International Competitive Bidding (ICB) tender to pick a technical services provider for the offshore Mumbai High oilfield, India’s largest field which has been producing oil since 1976.
Mumbai High, the oilfield located in the Arabian Sea, around 100 miles west of the Mumbai coast, hit peak production of 471,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil in March 1985. Output has now declined, to around 134,000 bpd last year.
After the bid evaluation process in the international tender, ONGC has selected M/s BP Exploration (Alpha) Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of BP Plc, to be the Indian company’s technical services provider.
BP’s scope of work will be to review the field performance and identify improvements in reservoirs, facilities, and wells to enhance the production from the field, ONGC said in a stock exchange filing today.
ONGC said that the technical services provider has indicated “a substantial increase in O+OEG production (up to 60%) from baseline production levels (reputed third-party vetted production estimates with natural decline) over 10 years contract period.”
