ONGC MADE 23 OIL & GAS FINDS IN FY17

NEW DELHI: State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) made 23 oil and gas discoveries in the fiscal year ended March 31 as a record number of wells drilled helped it uncover new reserves.

"FY 2016-17 has been one of the most successful years of the last decade in exploring oil and gas with more thrust in increased exploration activities during the year," a top company official said. Its exploratory efforts yielded 23 new discoveries, a 35 per cent jump over 17 finds made in 2015-16 fiscal.

Of the 23 new discoveries, 12 are new prospects – a potential trap which may contain hydrocarbons, while 11 are new pools – a geological term for subsurface hydrocarbon accumulation. As many as 13 new discoveries were made in onland and 10 in offshore wells.

"A total of 100 exploratory wells were drilled which is higher by 9 per cent as compared to 92 wells drilled in the previous year 2015-16. Of these, 37 wells proved hydrocarbon bearing registering success ratio of 37 per cent," he said.

IEA in a report on Thursday said oil discoveries declined to 2.4 billion barrels in 2016, compared with an average of 9 billion barrels per year over the past 15 years.

Also, the number of projects that received a final investment decision dropped to the lowest level since the 1940s.