India’s Hydrocarbon Outlook 2024 113 A Report on Exploration & Production Activities Oil India Private Limited in 1959, which became OIL as a PSU (in 1981) to increase the pace of exploration in Assam. In 1959, the Government set up Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC), which intensified and spread exploration to various parts of the country. ONGC systematically started geophysical surveys in other sedimentary basins considered prospective, resulting in the discovery of the Ankleshwar oil field in Gujarat in 1960. Offshore exploration in India was initiated with the experimental seismic survey in the Gulf of Cambay in 1962 and later in the western offshore. Detailed seismic surveys in the western offshore resulted in the discovery of a giant structure in Bombay Offshore in 1972-73, later termed as Bombay High Field. ONGC and OIL generated considerable amounts of E&P data through geoscientific surveys and drilling, making them the earliest dominant players in the Indian E&P industry. However, private sector E&P companies also contributed to data generation through the global bidding route under Pre-NELP (1980-95) and pre-NELP field rounds (1992-93) offers and discovered field rounds since the 1980s. The real boost in exploration efforts and appraisal of Indian basins came during the NELP regime (1999-2015), particularly in offshore areas, resulting in a quantum jump in data volume from the preceding era. Both NOC and private operators contributed to this using the latest technology of the time. Multi-client surveys, particularly, projects INDIASPAN 1 (2006) and INDIASPAN 2 (2009) were conducted under Non-Exclusive Multi-Client (NEMC) Policy which for the first time mapped west coast and east coast sedimentary basins of India on a regional/basinal scale. Lately, new data is being acquired by Operators in the blocks awarded in Open Acreage Licensing Program (OALP) and Discovered Small Field (DSF) rounds under Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP) launched in 2016. A significant amount of seismic data has also been acquired under the government-funded schemes like onland National Seismic Programme (NSP)-2016-21, offshore Andaman Seismic Program (2020) and just concluded Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) Surveys (2023) with seismic 2D lines upto EEZ boundary in east and west coasts. Government is further continuing with funding “Mission Anveshan” in onshore and “Extended Continental Shelf (ECS)” in offshore to augment and infill the existing coverage of seismic data. Service providers have also been reprocessing vintage 2D/3D and CSEM data under the “value-addition” clause of NDR data policy to generate new insights from vintage data using their latest proprietary technology.
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