Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd today reported that its wholly owned subsidiary, Bharat PetroResources Ltd, has struck oil and gas in an onshore field in Tamil Nadu.
A consortium of Bharat PetroResources and the national upstream oil company, ONGC found oil and gas near a place 14 km south east of the town of Chidambaram. Bharat Petro has 40 per cent interest in the consortium, while the operator of the block, ONGC, has the rest.
BPCL has described the find as “a major breakthrough” in the Cauvery basin. The exploratory well produced 115 cubic meters a day of crude oil and 11,500 cubic metres of gas.
Details such as how much of oil and gas the field holds and can be produced will be known only after the field is delineated and thickness of hydrocarbons bearing sands measured at various points.
After the field is developed for production, the output will still depend upon how many producing wells they decide to drill.
However, the significance of today’s announcement is that it is an onshore find. The Narimanam oil field was discovered in 1986 and stopped production in the early 2000s. The Kuttalam field was discovered in the mid 1990s and is producing some gas.
Since then there have been two announcements of hydrocarbon strikes in the region, but both of them were offshore.
In January 2007, a consortium of Hardy Oil and ONGC announced a gas strike off Cauvery basin in the Bay of Bengal. Due to a dispute with the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons, the first cubic metre of gas is yet to be produced from the field.
In April 2011, Reliance Industries said it had struck gas in another area in the Cauvery offshore region. The field is under development.