New Delhi, Oct 29: State-run oil firms will invest Rs 25,000 crore a year through the 10th Five Year Plan period (2002-07) in oil and gas exploration, refinery capacity expansion and building pipelines, Petroleum Secretary B K Chaturvedi said today. "In 9th Five Year Plan, Rs 50,000 crore investment was made and in the next five years more than Rs 120,000 crore would be invested," he said at a CII conference here.
While refiners Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum are expanding their Panipat, Mumbai and Vizag refineries respectively, gas firm GAIL would be building a 7000 km national gas pipeline grid.
Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) is getting into deep-sea oil and gas exploration in a big way even as it invests heavily in enhancing production from existing fields.
Besides a host of investment is lined up for fuel quality improvement, he said.
Private sector firms like reliance industries and cairn energy would also be invest close to Rs 4000 crore in bringing gas to shore from their recent finds in Bay of Bengal.
Chaturvedi said Indian gas scenario will see a change with the arrival of imported gas in first quarter of 2004 at Dahej in Gujarat. Petronet LNG Ltd is importing 20 million standard cubic metres per day of gas in form of LNG from Qatar. This is one-third of present availability of 65 mmscmd.
Besides, Shell will bring 8-10 mmscmd gas from 2005 while Reliance is likely to produce 25-30 mmscmd from its Bay of Bengal block.
All these will help bridge the current natural gas shortfall of about 50 mmscmd.
Bureau Report