ONGC pares oil output target by 3.5%

The country’s biggest oil and gas explorer, Oil & Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), has trimmed its crude oil output target by around 3.5% for the current financial year to end-March because of infrastructure shortages and technical issues, although the state-run firm expects production to rise next year as several new fields come on stream.
In its annual plan document for 2009-10, the company said crude oil production during 2008-09 was now expected to be 26.085 million metric tonnes (MMT) as against the earlier estimate of 27.054 MMT, hit mainly by a 0.611 MMT shortfall from its offshore assets and a 0.358 MMT shortfall from its onshore fields mainly in Gujarat.
“(The) main reasons for the shortfall...are non-availability of production infrastructure like floating production, storage and offloading vessel required for interim processing of crude, less number of development wells due to non-availability of rigs and the delay in integrated development of...fields in the east coast,” ONGC said in the document.
But the company, in which the government owns a 74.16% stake and was the first to discover oil in India in the 1960s, has marginally increased its production target for 2009-10 by 0.865 MMT anticipating crude oil production from Bassein & satellite, Neelam & Heera, Assam, Ahmedabad and Mehsana fields.
ONGC said it expected to produce 22,248 million metric standard cubic meter (MMSCM) of natural gas in 2009-10, slightly down from a revised estimate of 22,287 MMSCM in 2008-09 but higher than its original estimate of 21,668 MMSCM for the year.