Reliance Industries and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation on Wednesday announced that they would jointly set up a School of Geophysics at Hyderabad.
RIL chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani made the announcement in this regard in the presence of ONGC CMD R S Sharma at a news conference on the sidelines of the three-day Third International Seminar and Exhibition on Exploration Geophysics and 31st annual convention of the Association of Exploration Geophysicists.
Stating that the country required to build the capacity in exploration as it remained underdeveloped in the entire spectrum of earth sciences, Ambani said, "The Indian story in exploration is beginning to unfold and Reliance will participate in it. We need to build the capacity of geophysicists and geoscientists in the country and ONGC and Reliance have decided to build a school of geophysics in the country."
Pointing out that both Reliance and ONGC as "one team India" had the core objective of finding more gas and oil reserves, he said that Reliance would try to offset the increasing cost of exploration with an increase in productivity. "We will do everything to optimise the cost," he added.
Krishna-Godavari basin and other basins on the Eastern Coast have high potential despite the huge reserves found there. "We have committed billions of dollars for exploration and we are not shy of doing it here," he said, referring to his plans for Andhra Pradesh, where the Reliance has found huge reserves in KG basin four years ago.
RIL has unveiled its plans to produce 80 million standard cubic meters of gas per day by 2008 in KG basin by investing $5.2 billion over next two to three years for the purpose.
The projections for both production and investments were doubled in the last two years. RIL has also doubled its reserve projections to 11.3 trillion cubic feet from 5.32 TCF estimated in the initial plan.
The reserves were found in 2002. "We will try our best to explore more reserves in the basin," he pointed out.
Reiterating that Reliance is committed to Andhra Pradesh, he said the company would first supply gas to the local people. "We feel that the benefit of gas should go to common people. As we pass along, the gas will be first supplied to homes of people in smaller cities. The people of Hyderabad will get the gas later but it will be first supplied to people in Kakinada," he said.