With the Planning Commission having raised grave concerns over almost a 50 per cent fall in acreage available for exploration of oil and gas across the country during the 11th Plan period, the Petroleum Ministry in an effort to help contractors explore greater area for extracting the hydrocarbons, has decided to set up a National Data Repository (NDR) centre.
The Plan panel recently had asked the Petroleum Ministry whether it has any plans of working out a faster acreage award vehicle on the lines of NElP (New Exploration licensing Policy) which would help in augmenting oil and gas production. Subsequently according to official sources, the ministry has invited tenders for setting up the NDR. These were floated last month and are likely to be opened by end of the year.
Sources added that the matter came up for discussions during a review meeting of the ministry’s performance in the current fiscal, when the topic of drastically reducing acreage available for exploration of oil and gas came up.
As per the information available with The Pioneer, seismic survey data of acreages (both two-dimensional as well three-dimensional) available with ONGC, Oil India ltd (OIl) and private joint venture partners for the 11th Plan period has shown a considerable drop in exploration acreage. While the likely achievement of acreage available for exploration according to two dimensional survey was pegged at 3,43,558 km during the 11th Plan, the actual projected achievement would only come to around 1,28,424 km.
Similarly as per the data, the three-dimensional survey shows that the likely achievement stood at 2,14,424 square km during the 11th Plan, the project achievement stands well behind at 1,50,573 square km during the period.
The Plan panel citing this data, sources said, noted that availability of acreage for exploration has fallen drastically and went on to describe the situation as so grave that even another quick launch of another NElP round may not make much of a difference.
In this scenario, official sources said that the Petroleum Ministry issued tenders for setting up the NDR. They added that the NDR is likely to be set up by 2016 as its formation would greatly depend on the entire process is expedited.
Once the data centre is in operation, the Government would be in a position to provide a more flexible system to hydrocarbon prospecting companies in selecting acreage.
Sources further added that the companies would use the NDR data and select acreage for prospecting. The Plan panel though does not seem to share the Petroleum Ministry’s enthusiasm about NDR solving the problem of falling acreage, as during the meeting it is learnt to have told it that the proposed move would take a lot of time to take off.
And though the Petroleum Ministry has proposed the NDR system as a remedy for the falling acreage problem, the Planning Commission has asked it to still mull over a mechanism that can expedite awarding of acreages.