Govt admits stagnation in ONGC exploration activities

New Delhi, Aug 1 (UNI) The government today admitted that there has been stagnation in oil exploration activities of the public sector Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) for the last four to five years.

''Most of the producing fields of ONGC are ageing, and in the declining phase of production,'' Minister Petroleum and Natural Gas Murli Deora told the Rajya Sabha during the Question Hour.

Investments were being made to arrest the natural decline, which was six to eight per cent per annum in production, maintaining the reservoir health and gaining additional production wherever feasible, he said.

He said the ONGC has earmarked an investmenmt of Rs 4976.02 crore for 2006-07 which includes expenditure on development driling and capital projects.

The crude oil production of ONGC during 2006-07 was estimated at 27.35 MMT, he said.

He said the nature of investment in exploration and petroleum industry was such that it was difficult to directly correlate investment to annual incremental production, as one of the major efforts is to arrest natural decline in fields which have been producing for long, and there is a time lag between investment and actual production.

Earlier, BJP Members Ravi Shakar Prasad, Murli Manohar Joshi and Jaswant Singh expressed dissatisfaction over the Minister's replies and said their query about what the government was doing to increase production and what was the extent of sucess of private exlorers in the field had not been answered properly by the Minister.

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