CMD Oil India Ltd. on ET Now | Q4 FY25 Results Insights

First of all, let me convey my heartfelt gratitude for having me. It's a warm good morning to all of you there. We are looking at a multi-prong strategy to enhance our production. Today, as we speak, we have about 1 lakh square kilometers of area with Oil India Limited for carrying out exploration, and we have about 4,800 square kilometers of area under our mining lease for our production purpose. So we have carried out something called a near-field exploration campaign, which has given us new additional production opportunities. Plus, we have drilled an array of development wells, which is giving us the growth percentage in terms of our crude oil and natural gas opportunities.

I would answer this question on a technical front. See, in India, we are actually dealing with very old and mature fields, and more so in the Assam shelf. Now, the Assam shelf is one of the best category-one basins where we have enough opportunity still left. So while we are looking at managing the reservoirs which are old and on a decline pressure, we are also discovering new pools and new prospects. So as we speak, if you look at our decline rate, it is about 8 to 10%. And on top of it, we are scripting 2.5 to 3% growth this year. So the gross, if you look at it, is about 11 to 12% growth. That's the subject on which we need to address and what we need in terms of our exploration effort: a big discovery which would actually change the game.

I tell you something very interesting. Last year we did about 45 plus geological studies, including petroleum system modeling, and that gave us an inventory of about 90 plus new locations. That's one piece as part of our near-field exploration effort. As far as the OLP round is concerned, under OLP9 we have secured about 40,000 square kilometers of area in the deep and ultra-deep waters of the Mahanadi basin in the offshore waters. These are the areas where we have frontier basins, but we are looking forward to having some prospects there, and only time will tell after we do the initial seismic. And as we speak, let me share with you, we are undertaking drilling in our Andaman and Nicobar basin. We have got two OLP blocks there, and we are already ready to drill in our Kerala-Konkan basin.

That's what we could realize this year.

I would tend to agree with you with the outlook that is emerging since the last two months and going forward. That's the range we are looking at. And to prepare ourselves for that, we have already initiated how to bring in operational efficiency in what we are doing, and that has already started. We have already mapped the wells or the development wells or the locations which are more prospective or have better pools. So that activity has already been initiated. Number three, we are actually enhancing our drilling strategy so that we will fast-track our drilling process and we should be able to drill more wells to have more production, because that's the way we thought we will counter this particular outlook.

I would put that number at something like 35 to 38%. That's the basic understanding I have on that. Since we are not into the import of crude oil, that's the understanding I carry.