Oil India saw its crude production volumes dip 4-5% in 2012-13 fiscal as the Assam unions strikes, bandhs and blockades earlier in the year, curtailed operations, a top official from the public sector oil and gas company said.

Oil India?s crude oil production volumes stood at 3.847 million tonne (MMT) in 2011-12 and natural gas volumes, at 2,633.29 million standard cubic metres (mscm). It has not yet reported its full-year results for 2012-13, hence the final numbers are not published.

?Oil India?s crude volumes have been growing over the last four years at a compounded growth level of 6-7%. Only in the year 2012-13 we could not sustain growth. There have been some undue disturbances like bandhs and blockades that affected our production primarily in the Assam region. Things are slowly coming back to normalcy,? said Oil India director (finance) TK Ananth Kumar.

?We have taken up the issue with the state and central governments as well as local authorities and we are having good co-ordination at this point to address these issues,? he said. Kumar said that company is undertaking enhanced oil recovery initiatives in these blocks to enhance production.

Oil India has over 1 lakh sq km of petroleum exploration license areas, most of it in the North East region that accounts for its entire crude oil production and majority of gas production. Oil India?s exploration activities are spread over onshore areas of Ganga Valley and Mahanadi. It also has participating interest in NELP exploration blocks in Mahanadi Offshore, Mumbai deepwater, Krishna Godavari deepwater, as well as various overseas projects in Libya, Venezuela, Gabon, Iran, Nigeria and Sudan.

Kumar said Venezuela?s Carabobo oilfield, in which the company holds a stake, is facing some troubles due to the recent elections and contractual delays. The oilfield, which started producing oil from 3 wells in December, aims to produce 30,000 barrels per day of crude oil in the first development phase and eventually touch 400,000 bpd.

The company made about 7-8 medium sized discoveries 2012-13. ?Mizoram and Krishna Godavari are some blocks where prospects are good. At the moment the nominated blocks are all producing while the NELP blocks are under exploration,? he said.

The subsidy burden for Oil India rose to R8,100 crore compared with R7,352 crore in 2011-12. The 2012-13 fiscal has been the highest as far as under recoveries for the oil industry is concerned standing at close to R1.6 lakh crore.

?The higher subsidy burden was mainly because crude prices were more or less steady at around $ 110-112 per barrel during the entire year. Also the rupee has depreciated quite considerably. We certainly expect this to come down in 2013-14 by 20-30% because of the reforms that have been introduced and the softening crude prices,? said Kumar.