The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation will invest Rs 33,000 crore (Rs 330 billion) in the next five years on oil and gas exploration, discovery and asset building, a top company official has said.
The proposed investment is part of our expansion plans and the corporation is spending Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 100 billion) every year on business development, ONGC chairman and managing Director Subir Raha told reporters in Hyderabad on Wednesday night.
The budget may go up beyond the stipulated as the three exploration ships -- two of them in the Krishna Godavari delta of Andhra Pradesh and another at Porbandar coast in Gujarat -- are incurring Rs 4 crore (Rs 40 million) expenditure everyday, he said.
KG Basin is a prime discovery for the ONGC and "we are expecting some exciting news in the next two years. As the river deposits lot of petroleum wealth, the corporation has taken up extensive explorations at the river mouth as well as off shore in the delta area," he added.
Director (exploration) Y B Sinha said ONGC has contracted out deep sea drilling work on "integrated well basis" and the contractor will provide operational well to
ONGC.
The corporation had assigned 47 wells on contract basis off both the east and west coasts of the country, Sinha said.