Oil India Ltd (OIL) has signed a pact to bring in France’s TotalEnergies’ technical expertise on board to explore oil and natural gas reserves in its offshore areas, including the offshore blocks in the Andaman basin, where it had notified presence of natural gas reserves in September.
In a statement on Wednesday, OIL, which is India’s second-biggest state-owned explorer after ONGC, said that it had roped in the French energy giant to provide technical assistance in finding oil and natural gas reserves in deep and ultra-deepwater areas, adding to OIL’s current and future offshore portfolio.
“OIL and TotalEnergies inked a technology service agreement on November 19, 2025 in New Delhi to strengthen strategic collaboration for exploration activities in deep and ultra-deepwater offshore frontiers of Indian sedimentary basins, including the stratigraphic wells as mandated by the government of India,” the statement read.
This includes the ongoing appraisal programme of gas find in the shallow offshore blocks in Andaman basin, which OIL had notified in September.
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At the time, OIL had said that the “occurrence of natural gas” was reported in the second exploratory well Vijayapuram-2 drilled in the Offshore Andaman Block AN-OSHP-2018/1, but that it needed to conduct tests to confirm the potential of the reserved.
TotalEnergies will now assist the firm in evaluating the potential of the discovery including asserting if it is commercially viable to produce.
It will also assist in the exploration in OIL’s ultradeep water blocks in Mahanadi and Krishna Godavari Basins as well as cover evaluation of opportunities under current and future bid rounds and providing support during stratigraphic well drilling initiative in offshore Category-II & III Basins, the firm said.
Oil India Ltd (OIL) and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) have been probing for hydrocarbon reserves in the Andaman Sea in the hope of finding a discovery that could help cut India’s 88 per cent dependence on imports for its oil needs and 50 per cent reliance on overseas for gas requirements.
“The strategic collaboration marks a significant milestone in OIL’s commitment to pursue exploration in offshore frontiers towards possible hydrocarbon discovery and secure sustainable energy future for India,” the company said in the statement on Wednesday.
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