MOS(I/C) Petroleum & Natural Gas Shri Dharmendra Pradhan was on a two-day visit to Mumbai High Offshore operations of ONGC during which he visited a rig (Virtue-1), dedicated a FPSO (floating crude & gas processing unit), stayed overnight at Mumbai High North (MHN) processing platform and visited Uran gas processing plant.

On conclusion of the visit, while addressing the press Shri Pradhan said that a Hydrocarbon vision document for 2050 would be prepared for the E&P activities in Indian Offshore in order to tide over the challenges and maximise production. “Our Hon’ble Prime Minister has already set a target to reduce 10 per cent crude import dependence by 2022 through various initiatives including the increase of domestic production. This is certainly a daunting task, but we have to think differently to accomplish this mission,” he said.

Sh. Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister of State (IC) interacting with media

He said it has to be appreciated that the era of easy oil is over and challenges are mounting as far as production from tighter basin is concerned.

Sh. Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister of State (IC), MoPNG visits Mumbai High North Asst

While congratulating ONGC for an increase in production by seven per cent in offshore after a gap of seven years, he said “Country’s 40 per cent oil and gas comes from Mumbai High which is a huge contribution by any standard”. He also complimented ONGC for successfully producing sour oil, which is one of the most difficult tasks in offshore production.

He also spoke about Graben, a subsurface valley sandwiched between the two giant fields-Mumbai High North and Mumbai High South. Recently, Graben has sparked a hope of getting new oil from this tighter structure which was earlier considered devoid of hydrocarbon.

During the visit he also interacted with the young officers of ONGC and held a Video-Conference meeting with ONGC operations managers in Bassein field and Heera-Neelum Fields.

MJPS