India's top oil and gas producer, Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC.BO), plans to spend 100 billion rupees ($2.5 billion) over next five years to help maintain output from its ageing fields, a top official said.
ONGC, India's second-most valuable company with a market capitalisation of $48 billion, is facing a decline in output from its onshore fields that were discovered decades ago. "All the fields which we had discovered in the '60s and '70s are quite matured and old," Ajit Kumar Hazarika, director for ONGC's onshore assets, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
Hazarika, who runs ONGC's seven onshore assets, aims to produce 43 million tonnes of oil and nearly 29 billion cubic metres of gas over next five years but it will not be easy. "This is a big challenge, unless we find a new field it is very difficult to increase the production from old fields because the natural decline itself is 7 to 8 percent," he said.
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