Author: Sanjay Dutta
Publication: The Times of India
Date: November 2, 2002
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/xml/comp/articleshow?artid=27019563
Neighbour's envy, owner's pride.
That's how it is going to look like from Dhaka after the Reliance Industries-Niko
Resources consortium's gas find, the latest and the largest in the Krishna-Godavari
basin off the Visakhapatnam coast.
This, together with the gas find
reported earlier by the UK-based Cairns and hydrocarbons find by state-owned
Oil and Natural Gas Corporation in the region could turn US major Unocal's
plan to sell piped Bangladesh gas to India into a pipedream.
The Unocal plan, a subject of great
debate in Bangladesh, has been hanging fire for quite some time due to
political opposition in that country.
Besides, with more future finds
expected as firms drill deeper into the ocean, the government is unlikely
to dust the files on long- forgotten plans to import piped gas from Myanmar
and the current talks of a pipeline from Iran. Both the options are fraught
with great security concerns.
Is the government then evolving
an 'Oil from the West and gas from the East' policy? Could be. A hint of
this came from oil minister Ram Naik.
"With the Reliance find and ONGC-Videsh's
acquisitions in Sakhalin, Vietnam and now Sudan, India has moved closer
to securing its energy needs after deregulation," he said on Friday while
announcing the actual signing of an agreement for ONGC- Videsh's acquisition
of 40 per cent stake in a Sudan oilfield for $720 million. The country
at present imports 70 per cent of its crude requirement worth Rs 80,000
crore a year.
"Two historic developments have
given a big boost to India's efforts to achieve energy security: We have
now secured equity oil from the West and discovered our own gas in the
east," he said.
The Sudan oilfield has reserves
of over 150 million metric tonne (over 1050 million barrels) a day with
an upside potential of even more oil and gas in the block.
The field is currently producing
about 12 million metric tonnes per annum (about 240,000 barrels per day),
which is about the same as the production of the Mumbai High field. Thus,
OVL has acquired about 3 million metric tonnes per annum of crude oil from
this producing property as of 31st August this year.
OVL already has an ongoing gas project
in Vietnam. The first gas is expected to flow by December. The estimated
gas production would be about 7.5 million cubic metres per day, of which
OVLs share would be 45 per cent. The estimated investment of OVL in the
Vietnam project is about $300 million.
OVL's Sakhalin offshore project,
at an investment of about $1.7 billion, would fetch about 5 million metric
tonnes per annum of oil and about 8 million cubic metres of gas per day
from 2005. In addition, OVL has acquired interest in exploration blocks
in Iraq, Myanmar, Libya, Iran and the US.
Domestically, the new gas finds
will be good enough to feed the eastern and southern parts of the country.
Though Reliance is reported to be more interested in moving the gas to
the western states, others like Cairn or ONGC may yet settle to feed the
east.
