To increase self-reliance in the sectors of oil and natural gas, state-run oil explorers Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) will undertake a stratigraphic drilling campaign next year to discover new hydrocarbon reserves in hitherto untapped offshore areas.
The campaign, which has a fiscal outlay of ₹3,200 crore, will be compensated for by the government of India and aided by global energy giant BP in providing technical expertise in identifying the locations as well as drilling, officials said. The expenditure marked out includes the fee to be paid to BP for its services.
In the first phase of the drilling, four wells will be drilled in the deep sea of Andaman, Mahanadi, Saurashtra and Bengal sedimentary basins, officials further added.
"ONGC has stated that they have a rig and we hope to start drilling sometime in early 2026," an official involved in the process said.
"The blocks (or areas) where the stratigraphic drilling is to take place is currently owned by the government and it alone will decide how any discovery has to be monetised – either through auctioning the area or giving it to a company or a consortium on a nomination basis," another official said.
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Stratigraphic drilling – also known as a stratigraphic test well – is a type of exploratory drilling aimed at studying underground geological formations rather than producing oil or gas. These wells are drilled to gather data on subsurface layers through continuous coring, petrophysical logging, and seismic data integration. The objective is to build a detailed geological profile to support future hydrocarbon exploration, without any immediate intent to extract resources.
This will help reach a decision if the area holds hydrocarbon resources that could be commercially produced.
While it’s still unclear if BP would like to be a part of the monetisation, it is quite possible, say official sources, that it demands a first right of refusal (ROFR) in any development, which translates into getting a predefined percentage of stake in any consortium that monetises a discovery.
“But nothing has been conveyed so far," the official said.
In a major step towards energy security, the government has reduced 'no-go' zones by 99 per cent, thereby unlocking over 1 million square kilometres of India's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) for oil and gas exploration. These ‘no-go’ areas were previously restricted due to strategic interests like defense and space programmes.
To make deep sea exploration viable, the Centre has also refined gas pricing formulas to allow higher rates for resources produced from difficult areas.
Additionally, in a bid to attract international interest in exploration, India launched a Data Centre at the University of Houston in 2022 to showcase its sedimentary basin data. At the same time, the National Data Repository (NDR) was upgraded to a cloud-based platform, which enabled seamless, self-service access to exploration data. Global energy giants like ExxonMobil and Chevron have since acquired Indian basin data, reflecting renewed confidence in the country's exploration and production (E&P) potential.
India imports almost 88 per cent of its oil needs and about half of its natural gas requirement, which is why the government is keen to cut its import bill of USD 150 billion by raising domestic production. One way of doing this is to find newer resources and stratigraphic drilling is a step in that direction – a time-consuming process that takes as much as three months to drill and another three to four quarters for the results to be interpreted.
The Oilfields (Regulation and Development) Act was also amended in March to greater clarity to India’s hydrocarbon sector by including a ‘unified permit system’ that covers both conventional and unconventional resources including shale oil/gas, coal bed methane, and gas hydrates along with defined lease tenures and conditions. The amendments also protect investors from mid-term policy shifts, such as the introduction of new cesses or royalties.
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