India's Hydrocarbon Outlook – 2022-2023

55 DGH: 3 DECADES OF UNLOCKING INDIA'S HYDROCARBON POTENTIAL Kutch is a Category II basin, implying that the basin has sub-commercial discovered inplace. The basin has an area of 58,554 sq. km. with 30,754 sq. km. onland area, 20,500 sq. km. shallow water area and 7,300 sq. km. deepwater area. In the basin, 17 plays are present within Mid Jurassic-to-Cretaceous in Onland and Mid Jurassic-to-Trap-to-Mid Miocene in Offshore. The geologically contiguous Kutch and Saurashtra basins are separated by the Saurashtra Arch in the offshore part. The Mesozoic sediments ranging in age from Middle Jurassic to Cretaceous are exposed in the mainland Kutch and encountered in the wells drilled in offshore. The Cenozoic strata are also exposed in the southwestern part of Kutch mainland and encountered in the offshore wells. The basin has significant opportunity to consolidate discovered resources of Tertiary Plays. Under a recently awarded contract for discovered small fields, 8 gas discoveries with Inplace of 21 BCM are now contemplated for development. Being analogous to Saurashtra total of 68 exploratorywells (including 10onland) were drilled in the basin. During the Late Triassic period, the Indian sub-continent broke off from the Gondwana mainland and started drifting northward. Concurrently, rifting started along existing Pre-Cambrian structural trends mostly influenced by the northeast-southwest Aravalli, eastnortheast-westsouthwest Son-Narmada- Tapti and northnortheast-southsouthwest Dharwar trends. The rifting, which was instrumental in the origin of the Kutch and Son- Narmada Tapti basins, came to an end during Cretaceous with the deposition of thick clastics of the prograding delta in the basin. At this time, the Indian plate had reached the reunion hotspot which caused the outpouring of basalt 9. KUTCH BASIN DGH Internal DGH Archive Basin, opportunity also lies for exploring Mesozoic Plays. Exploration in the basin started in the early 1960's with the first offshore seismic survey conducted during 1964-65. Since then the whole area had been covered with various campaigns of 2D, 3D and long-offset seismic data along with gravity and magnetic surveys. A