Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) has managed to control the decline in its crude oil output and will for the first time in several years end the fiscal with stable production, its Chairman Dinesh K Sarraf has said.
ONGC over the past decade has seen its output dip by at least 2-3 per cent annually due to declining productivity at its main fields, which are very old and matured. "Declining trend in production has been arrested. We would have stable production after several years," he said.
ONGC's crude oil production in 2013-14 declined to 22.25 million tonnes from 22.56 million tonnes in the previous year. However, in the first nine months of current fiscal, production has remained flat at 16.73 million tonnes. "The production decline rate globally is 6-8 per cent. If our overall production is stagnant, that means there is increase in production somewhere," Sarraf said.
Oil production from offshore fields, mainly off the west coast, has increased 8-10 per cent this fiscal but there has been a dip in output from onland fields. "We made 16 new discoveries in first nine months of current fiscal as compared to 14 in the whole of the previous year," he said