ONGC defies global declining trend in oil prod; sees 3.5% rise

State-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has defied global trends of alarming decline in crude oil production from the ageing fields in non-OPEC countries during the current decade and has seen a 3.5 per cent rise in output, CMD R S Sharma has said.

Sharma said globally oil production from mature fields has been declining as has been brought out by a Washington-based international energy research agency PFC Energy in its report.

PFC Energy in its report has analysed declining oil production trend in non-OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries)countries. It says non-OPEC fields were declining at an average rate of 9.4 per cent a year.

"The decline rate has been increasing steadily in the past five years, evidence of the industry's inability to arrest decline in mature fields," it said.

ONGC defied the trend and has been successful in arresting the decline. 15 major fields, which are producing with an average field life span of 25-30 years, and account for 77 per cent of total ONGC's production, registered an 1.6 per cent increase in 2007-08 over what they were producing in 2000-01.

The 15 fields produced 19.99 million tonnes of crude oil in 2007-08 as against 19.56 million tonnes in 1999-2000.