Govt pushes Marathon-ONGC tie-up

Govt pushes Marathon-ONGC tie-up
Sunil Jain

New Delhi, Jan 4: While ONGC is confident of boosting recovery levels at Bombay High, the top bureaucracy is keen that it tie up with the US-based Marathon for this purpose. Under the proposal -- based on a note submitted by Marathon -- ONGC and Marathon would set up a joint venture firm to operate Bombay High, with Marathon as the main operator.

Interesingly, a similar proposal was made in 1994 -- ONGC had floated a bid at that point when the minister Captain Satish Sharma was keen on the idea -- but this was later dropped. At that time, it was pointed out that enhanced oil recovery from Bombay High could be done by ONGC along with technical assistance from overseas experts -- if, however, a share of the oil was given for this to various oil companies, the costs for the country would be very high.

After this, ONGC hired top global consultants (Gaffney Cline for Bombay High and Degolyer & McNaughton for Neelam) to help enhance recoveries from fields where production has been falling -- both Bombay High and Neelam have very low recoveries at present, and ONGC has not been able to enhance their productivity on its own so far. After these experts worked with ONGC, and studied data from the fields, ONGC produced a new scheme of operations. For Bombay High, it projected an additional increase in production of 75 million tonnes over 20 years. Under the scheme, a total of Rs 7,500 crore is to be spent over 5 years for the enhanced oil recovery process.

Last fortnight, however, the Cabinet Secretary held a meeting with Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra, PMO Secretary N.K. Singh, Revenue Secretary S. Narayan and Petroleum Secretary P. Shankar, to discuss the issue once again. ONGC chief B.C. Bora was also asked to attend the meeting which was also attended by former petroleum secretary Probir Sengupta and Finance Secretary Ajit Kumar.