ONGC lines up Rs 15K cr to revamp old equipment

Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) will revamp its ageing infrastructure at oilfields across the country.  The country's largest oil and gas production company will shell out around Rs 15,000 crore for this purpose.

The revamping will start with its assets in Assam. The company will soon float tenders worth Rs 2,500 crore, a senior company executive said. ONGC has three fields in Assam - Rudrasagar, Lakwa and Geleki. The Rudrasagar field is almost 40 years old.

 "Replacing the equipment has become paramount as they are decades old. There are frequent leaks in pipelines from producing wells which lead to shutdowns," said the executive.

 The crude oil and gas processing plant attached to the Lakwa field is also old. The unit trips if it is run for over five minutes. "Some gas that we can recover is thus lost," the executive added.

Once Assam Renewal Project is completed in three years, ONGC plans to increase oil production from these fields by 20 per cent.

The company produces around 26 million per year of crude oil from its fields in the country with around 1.1 million tonne per year of oil from its three fields in Assam. Earlier, production from Assam was 1.5 million tonne per year

Once the Assam mission is completed, the company will take up the old equipment in the company's fields in Gujarat and the east coast. The Ankleshwar and Cambay fields in Gujarat started production in the mid-1960s.

 "We will now inject water and gas into the wells to keep the pressure in the wells intact. However, it could be a little too late as much of the reservoir pressure has already been lost," an ONGC executive from Assam said.

 The company will also undertake enhanced oil recovery methods to recover more oil once the water and gas injection project is over. "All of that will require more investments and will take some time," the executive added.

"We must complete these projects to increase production as no major new discoveries have taken place in the last decade," the ONGC executive said.