The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation’s 27,000 urja senanis ( energy soldiers ) make the country tick. India is the fifth largest economy in the world and ONGC Jeetega toh India Jeetega (ONGC's victory is India's victory)”, Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas and Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Hardeep Singh Puri said while rededicating ONGC's drilling rig Sagar Samrat, as a Mobile Offshore Production Unit ( MOPU) on 28 January 2023 at a ceremony held on the iconic rig.
Union Minister Puri, ONGC Chairman Arun Kumar Singh, ONGC Director (Technical and Field Services) Om Prakash Singh and Petroleum Secretary Pankaj Jain then proceeded to ONGC's Kendriya Vidyalaya Grounds, Panvel to meet ONGC staff and their families as well as the team which worked on converting the rig to a MOPU.
The Minister felicitated the original crew members of Sagar Samrat who worked in the seventies after Bombay High discovery as well as current crew and condoled families of those who perished in stormy mishaps laying down their lives for ONGC and more importantly for India's energy security
The Government plans to increase India's exploration acreage to 0.5 million sq. km. by 2025 and 1.0 million sq. km. by 2030, he said, pointing out that the Government has been successful in reducing the ‘No Go' area by 99%, thereby making available an additional approx. 1 million Sq.km. of India's EEZ for exploration.
MNCs like Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Total Energies are showing keen interest to invest in the Indian E&P segment, and some are already in talks with ONGC for firming up mutually beneficial partnerships,he said, noting that India is the world’s fastest-growing economy and the world’s 3rd largest consumer of energy, 3rd largest consumer of crude oil, 4th largest refiner, 6th largest importer of petroleum products, and 7th largest exporter of petroleum products as on date.
India's energy demand is expected to grow at about 3% per annum by 2040, compared to the global rate of 1%. Further, 25% of the global energy growth between 2020 and 2040 is going to come from India due to our fast-growing economy and demographic dividend. However, India imports 85% of its petroleum requirements and spent approx. $120 Billion in FY 2021-22 on the import of petroleum products.
The. Union Minister stressed that India’s Amrit Kaal cannot be realized without achieving energy Independence by 2047.
"We have made the transition to green energy successfully, but any sector which neglects to plough back into research, will erode it's successes.
Everything we do is a learning experience.We are acutely conscious of past mistakes but there is no point in harping on the past. We nust take responsibility for what we do", he said and highlighted policy reforms like Production Sharing Contract (PSC) regime, Discovered Small Field Policy, the Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy, the Setting up of a National Data Repository, etc.
The government has also provided functional freedom to NOCs like ONGC and wider private sector participation by streamlining approval processes including an electronic single window mechanism, he said.
The Union Minister also invited stakeholders to the upcoming India Energy Week scheduled to be held from 6th to 8th February 2023 at the Bangalore International Exhibition Center (BIEC), Bengaluru, where ONGC will be one of the stellar participants.
A word about Sagar Samrat MOPU:
Commissioned in 1973, Sagar Samrat was built at the Mitsubishi yard in Japan and set sail from Hiroshima on 3 April 1973. It drilled ONGC’s first Offshore well in 1974 in Mumbai Offshore region of Arabian Sea, then called the Bombay High. Sagar Samrat turned tides of India’s oil fortune by putting it on the global oil map. In 32 years, Sagar Samrat has drilled almost 125 wells and has been involved with 14 key offshore oil and gas discoveries in India.
Initially a jack-up drilling rig, Sagar Samrat has now been converted into a Mobile Offshore Production Unit (MOPU). The British engineering and consulting conglomerate Wood Group’s Mustang unit based in Texas,USA carried out the front-end engineering and design for the vessel’s conversion.
The vessel is currently deployed in the Western Offshore (WO)-16 field, located 140-145 kilometres west of Mumbai. Located adjacent to the ONGC’s existing WO-16 well head platform (WHP) in 76m of water depth, the vessel will be instrumental in producing from marginal fields in WO cluster thereby augmenting production. The MOPU is designed to handle 20,000 barrels per day of crude oil and has a maximum export gas capacity of 2.36 million cubic meters per day.
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