ONGC In Talks With Global Oil Majors Including ExxonMobil And Equinor For Deepwater Exploration In India

Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) is in talks with global oil majors to infuse state of the art technologies in its aggressive exploration push in deepwaters of India.

The state-run PSU held a range of discussions with major operators in the India Energy Week (IEW) in Bengaluru during 6 to 8 February.

ONGC held discussions with the American oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, the Norwegian energy multinational Equinor, the American oil services conglomerate Baker Hughes, the French research organization Institut Français du Pétrole on various issues like technology and deepwaters, the Petroleum Ministry said in a release on Tuesday (7 February).

On Monday (6 February), speaking at the leadership panel on “The importance of continued investment in Exploration & Production” at the IEW, ONGC chairman and CEO Arun Kumar Singh said, "Energy security is geography dependent. India has kept E&P investment same, and ONGC invests $3.5 billion to keep up production".

“The world is now getting balanced, as deep-Sea investments are becoming economical. A combination of factors is there. For India and China there is one reality. However, other geographies have different realities," Singh added.

Under the company's Energy Strategy 2040, Singh said that “Now, the investments needed are more as renewables have come in. So, there is an issue of structural inefficiencies which have crept in. The transition to renewables is a reality, however, oil and gas will remain in focus in the journey. It will happen eventually".