ONGC Flexes Its Muscles: Plans Purchase Of 27 Oil Rigs To Replace Old Ones For Rs 3,500 Crore

In a bid to improve the quality of operations and increase efficiency, the state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation of India has decided to purchase 27 rigs to replace the existing on-load rigs reports The Economic Times.

The investment is reported to cost the company around Rs 3,000 to Rs 3,500 crore. ONGC has initially planned to buy 50 rigs, reports suggest that they settled for 27.

The newly bought rigs will help replacement of 67 ageing one involved in onshore operations. Drilling rigs are mostly massive mobile structures which house equipment used to penetrate the earth’s surface to allow extraction of oil and gas from underground reservoirs.

ONGC had already drilled 503 wells in 2017-2018, the highest in 27 years in a bid to boost the production which has been stagnant for the past years.

India’s production of crude oil has been falling for more than six years, increasing its dependence on imports as local consumption expands with the rapidly growing economy. Domestic oil production contracted 3.3 per cent from a year earlier to 14.6 million metric tonnes in the April-August period this year, thereby raising dependence on imports for 83.2 per cent of the country’s oil requirement.