ONGC production set to fall

NEW DELHI, DEC 19: While global oil prices continue to shoot up they touched 26.5 a barrel yesterday ONGC is expected to record a shortag...

NEW DELHI, DEC 19: While global oil prices continue to shoot up they touched 26.5 a barrel yesterday ONGC is expected to record a shortage of a little under a million tonnes this year. According to petroleum ministry sources, part from a shortfall will be in Bombay High itself and a large shortfall will also take place in the Heera fields where production is likely to be around 7,000 barrels a day against the projected 15,000. At today8217;s prices, this overall shortfall translates into an additional import bill of around Rs 900 crore. The oil import bill for the current year is expected to be around 12.52 bn, which is almost double that for the previous year which was 6.48 bn.

This state of affairs of continuing shortfalls in production has so angered the new secretary petroleum Dr S Narayan, that last week he took ONGC officials to task, and even set up a review committee to get an accurate picture on what8217;s wrong and, if possible, to fix some blame for slow progress. Dr A R Sihag, directorexploration has been asked to review what progress ONGC had made in terms of the time-frame recommended by the Narayanan committee two years ago the Narayanan committee, along with ONGC officials and those from the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons had made specific recommendations on how to repair the Bombay High fields which had got extensively damaged due to reckless flogging of the fields in previous years. Sihag8217;s report will be submitted in another 3 weeks.

What got the petroleum secretary even more worked up was that, just a few weeks ago, the Ravva field also suffered a shutdown in production for two days for reasons so stupid that it isn8217;t funny.

Oil is pumped from the field into a tanker which is pulled to the shore by a tug the license of this foreign tug expired on November 31, but no one paid much attention despite the fact that the Ministry of Surface Transport sent two reminders to the project8217;s operators. Finally, on December 2, the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons pulled up theoperators, and work had to stop for two days till alternate arrangements were made.

All told, the loss of production was 1,20,000 barrels while the amount involved is obviously small by oil standards, oil ministry officials took this to be yet another instance of sloppy performance. The Ravva field is partly owned by ONGC, but is actually operated by a consortium of Videocon, Marubeni and Cairns Energy. By virtue of its 40 per cent share in the field, ONGC8217;s director operations A.S. Soni heads the management committee, though daily operations are supervised by an operations committee.