Cairn India to pump $3 bn over next 3 years in Raj oilfields

Cairn India plans to invest $3 billion over the next three yearss in finding more oil and raising output from its showpiece Rajasthan oilfields, the company's chief executive P Elango said.

"We have planned for a net capital investment of $3 billion in a three year period from FY2014 to FY2016. We are focused on realising the full potential of our world-class Rajasthan assets through a combination of aggressive exploration and fast-track development," he said in the company's annual report.

Cairn will raise crude oil production from Rajasthan fields by as much as 23% to 215,000 barrels per day by March 2014.

"The Rajasthan block's current production is at around 175,000 bpd. We expect to exit FY-2014 with a production in the range of 200,000-215,000 bpd," he said.

The current production comes from five fields - Mangala, Bhagyam, Aishwariya, Raageshwari and Saraswati.

The Mangala field, he said, is producing at plateau rates of 150,000 bpd. Aishwariya commenced production in March and is expected to ramp up to approved rate of 10,000 bpd over the next few months.

Bhagyam, the second biggest oilfield behind Mangala, is expected to ramp up to the approved rate of 40,000 bpd by the second half of current fiscal, he added.

Also, the Mangala Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) Field Development Plan (FDP) approval is in progress and Cairn expects to start full field implementation in FY2015, which will result in greater output and a further extension of the plateau in the producing field.

"We plan to drill more than 450 wells in Rajasthan block over a three year period, a significant increase from the current rate of 25 wells drilled in FY2013," Elango said.

The wells planned include 100 exploration and appraisal (E&A) wells, while balance will be development wells to sustain and enhance production volumes.

"The E&A wells are aimed to target gross recoverable risked prospective resource of 530 million barrels of oil equivalent," Elango said.

Company Chairman Navin Agarwal said the aggressive exploration and fast-track development is designed to bring new fields into production in a region where Cairn India has already discovered around 1.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent resources but has drilled only a part of its acreage.

"Exploration has been, and will continue to be, central to our growth plans," he said.