The Indian Oil & Gas Story — Part I
The Gandhian perspective of development states that the nature provides enough and not more, for our daily needs. It is not about growth. But if we want the growth, we must utilize the oil and gas present in the country.
Let’s go back to the history, around 60 million years ago, when GONDWANA split from Antarctica and started floating towards Eurasia, we made a terrible mistake of not steering past Madagascar quickly, so as we passed through Madagascar, there were huge volcanic eruption which led to the death of Dinosaurs and all the lava came and landed on GONDWANA, which is now to be found in and around Hyderabad which is called the deccan trap. There is a huge amount of crude oil present below the deccan trap but there is no other geological formation in the world which has so much volcanic rock above it. To discover the oil beneath, either India had to find its own technology to discover the oil or work in collaboration with expert from the world, to evolve this technology to get our own oil.
Secondly, when GONDWANA smashed into Eurasia, it threw up the highest mountain chain in the world. As the fishes which die, turn into oil in 60 million years, led to the oil reserves in the Terai Region of Himalayas, near the Indo-Nepal Border. The Headquarters of ONGC was thus setup in Dehradun, so that the oil can be extracted in full force from here, but with certain problems with Nepal, they never allowed a common project to drill out the oil from the other side of the border.
Then, in 2003, Cairn Energy discovered the single largest on-shore field in India, in the Barmer Region, they planned to have a common project with ONGC and Nepal ( by acquiring blocks there), and thus we would be able to restore the integrity of the Sub-Himalayan region, and thereby gain access the oil which must be there. Unfortunately Cairn was drove out, and our own blocks lay in imbalance. This is a big lost opportunity. In the Bay of Bengal, we made the single largest gas discovery in 2003, that anyone made anywhere in the world, by Reliance, a well-known private sector company, tied up with BP. The Bay of Bengal is to Asia what the North Sea is to Europe, that was the potential, but we fluffed it.
When it comes to deep see drilling, offshore, there are many who believe that Bombay High is only one of the structures producing oil that has helped us going for last 50 years. from 1974 till now. Along the Konkan — Kerala coat and even in Bay of Bengal, we can still find oil, if we have the technology to do it. The problem with this technology is, usually in the Arabian Sea, we have to go to a depth of 10,000 meters to hit land and pull out the hydrocarbons, but whereas in North Sea the depth is just 150 meters, Indians would call it a North Lake. So again here, we need to build technology for ourselves or with collaboration with other intellectual companies over the world.
“Companies don’t think or do research , they are in the business of profit, but Commission are think-tank”
ONGC started as Oil and Natural Gas Commission, which was basically a think-tank to find the oil and produce it economically. Once it was converted to Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited, and listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), a lot of people did make profit from it, but the approach to knowledge changed & ONGC pursued profits from then on. It was required for them to do so, as a listed company on Stock Exchange. We can produce our own oil and not be dependent on the imported oil, but we need to increase our knowledge base for that and maintain links with intellectual corporation around the world.
*Points mentioned here are taken from ‘Energy, Oil and Geopolitics at a panel discussion on “ Idea of India: A People’s Agenda” organized by the Centre for Policy Analysis in New Delhi, by Mani Shankar Aiyar”
Stay Tuned! Next Blog will be on ‘How Soviet Union solved a similar crisis?’.
