Hindustan Oil Exploration to increase production by more than three-fold

Hindustan Oil Exploration Company (HOEC), that has acquired entire share capital of Geopetrol International this week, said that it is set to increase its net production by more than three-fold from 1800 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) to 8000 boepd in three years. 
 
“Through the acquisition, we have become the largest private sector oil and gas player in North East. From a mere net production of 400 boepd in 2016-17, we have increased our production to 1800 boepd in 2017-18 and plans to further increase 8000 boepd by 2020-21,” said P Elango, managing director of the company. He added that the new acquisition that includes entry into the Kharsang Oil field in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, is going to be a gamechanger for the company in future.

 
The company is targeting an overall investment of around $ 35 million in the next three years. Elango claims that this will completely be funded through internal sources as HOEC is a debt-free company with a cash balance of Rs 1.3 billion. 
 

Currently, HOEC is an operator in five onshore and two offshore blocks and in addition to this, it has participating interest in two offshore blocks too. A major boost to the company in last one year was through the production in Dirok field in Assam, in which Indian Oil Corporation and Oil India Ltd are partners. “We are ramping up our production from Assam field by drilling two more wells in addition to the existing four. From a production of 2 million cubic feet of gas from PY-1 field in the Bay of Bengal, we expect an increase to 10 million cubic feet by July and increase our net production to 3600 boepd this year,” he added.  

 
In the recently concluded discovered small and marginal field auctions, the company had won a field B-80 in Bombay High, which is expected to bring in around 15 million cubic feet of production by April 2020. The company has already submitted its field development plan for the field.  According to the FDP, development of this field will happen in two phases at an overall investment of $43 million.