ONGC lines up Rs 83,000 crore investment for 25 new oil, gas projects

State-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) is investing around Rs 83,000 crore on 25 major projects, Shashi Shanker, Chairman and Managing Director, of the company said on Thursday.

Cumulative oil and gas gain from around 15 of these projects is expected to be over 180 Million Metric tons of Oil equivalents (MTOE) in their life cycle. The national explorer is envisaging a gas output of over 32 Billion Cubic Meters (BCM) by financial year 2024, he said, addressing the employees on 73rd Independence Day celebrations, through a webcast from headquarters Dehradun to over 30,000 employees across 38 work locations of ONGC.

Pitching for a transformative approach to the energy business, the ONGC chairman talked about the ambitious ‘Energy Strategy 2040’, which will help the company achieve three times the revenue distributed across exploration and production, refining, marketing and other businesses. The strategy also includes increase in profit after tax by four times, with a 10 per cent contribution from non-oil and gas business. The company is also targetting a five to six times rise in current market capitalisation.

The company had earned its highest revenue of Rs 1,09,655 crore in FY19 -- an increase of 29 per cent -- from the last fiscal. ONGC also logged a record net profit of Rs 26,716 crore, an increase of 34 per cent over 2017-18. Shankar mentioned that ONGC Videsh recorded the highest ever production of 14.83 Mtoe of oil and oil equivalent gas during the financial year. In downstream refining, MRPL achieved the highest ever throughput of 16.43 MT with a utilisation of 109.5 per cent. Newly acquired HPCL (ONGC subsidiary) has also achieved the highest ever sales volume of 38.7 MT with a domestic sales growth of 4.7 per cent over the historical high.

Supporting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for a domestic solar revolution, ONGC had launched a nation-wide Solar Chulha Challenge. Shanker said that through this initiative and with the help of IIT Mumbai, 86 Solar PV cooking stoves were installed at Bacha and Jamthi in Betul district of Madhya Pradesh. 

The ONGC CMD added that the company is focused on people-connect and engagement with society and the company’s corporate social responsibility programmes reflect this. In FY19, ONGC spent Rs 615 Crore on CSR initiatives, with a focus on national campaigns of the government like Swachh Bharat, education, health and nutrition among others.