Rs. 81,800 cr lined up for projects, says ONGC.

State-owned petroleum explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) said that it would invest Rs. 81,800 crore to bring new discoveries into production and check the decline in output from ageing fields.

The company has taken up 15 projects for development. Of these, seven are complete and eight are under implementation. 'These projects, with an estimated capital outlay of Rs. 40,573 crore, are geared up to produce an additional 45.6 million tonne (mt) of crude and 67.4 billion cubic metre (bcm) of gas,' ONGC's chairman and managing director D K Sarraf told shareholders at the annual general meeting.

He added the company was focusing on two other projects - Daman, a cluster of multiple discoveries in western offshore and KG-DWN-98/2 in the Krishna-Godavari basin. The Daman project, with an estimated peak production of 8.5 million standard cubic metres a day (mscmd) and an investment of Rs. 5,200 crore, has been approved by ONGC’s board. It is likely to start production by July 2016 while output in KG-DWN-98/2 will commence in 2018.

BS