Oil firms' output set to decline fast: Govt

Oil secretary says, ONGC’s production to halve by 2030

The Centre today expressed the concern that oil and gas output of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) was fast declining from existing oil fields.

“By 2030, the oil and gas output will decline to half from the current level,” said Petroleum Secretary R S Pandey at the inaugural session of the ‘Explotech-2009’, organised by ONGC.

Stating that justice was not being done to new blocks that were allotted under the auction policy, he said 90 per cent of the K-G basin and other oil and gas reserve areas like Mumbai and Andaman largely remained untapped.

He also called for more research and advancement of technology to meet the country’s growing demand for hydrocarbons.

He underlined the need of sustaining the output in the future, as the share of oil and gas in the energy basket of India was 44-45 per cent against over 50 per cent in the rest of the world. “The question comes how to sustain it (output of oil and gas) and everybody knows, we import 80 per cent of the oil used by the nation,” he said.

He further added the dependency on oil and gas was set to grow rapidly because India was a growing economy. The oil and gas scenario was marred by four characteristics — declining output, declining reserves, inadequate investment and growing demand, Pandey said.

“So, what is going to happen to the whole development process in the future as the country is overwhelmingly dependent on oil and gas,” he asked.

“ONGC’s output is declining, or, at best, is stagnant. Oil wells have become old and the output is declining. At best, oil production should sustain at the current level, forget about the incremental requirements,” he said.

In the 1980s, the production outstripped the discoveries and reserves. But during the last few years, the decline in the output in existing fields is much more and faster than before. There was a need for more investments to improve the output from the existing oil wells. But he said investment throughout the world in the sector declined by about 18 to 20 per cent in 2009 as compared to 2008. All this was happening when the demand for oil and gas was rapidly increasing. So in the conventional energy, there is lot of need of new ideas and knowledge which are characterised by R&D technology, he added.