Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Reliance Industries have signed an agreement to share resources, including rigs and supply vessels, used to find and produce oil and gas.
The two firms signed the agreement “to enable resource sharing for deepwater offshore exploration and production operations on India’s East Coast, particularly across the Krishna Godavari (KG) basin and Andaman offshore”.
The collaboration seeks to explore opportunities to jointly utilise resources, infrastructure, and technical capabilities across offshore energy activities to reduce duplication of effort, optimise capital deployment, and support the timely development of offshore assets, which are critical to meeting India’s growing energy demand.
ONGC Director (Production) Pankaj Kumar said that the partnership marks a major step towards cost optimisation, faster execution, improved asset utilisation in complex deepwater projects and creating stronger synergies between India’s largest oil and gas producer and the nation’s biggest and most valuable company which have adjacent fields and operations, particularly off the east coast.
Key highlights of partnership
ONGC said that the company and Reliance will pursue sharing of key resources required for offshore operations, which may include (but are not limited to): onshore and offshore processing facilities, drilling rigs, marine vessels (MSV, Tugs, PSV), power, pipelines, logging and well services, etc.
According to ONGC, the agreement is expected to help optimise costs through the shared use of high-value rigs, vessels, logistics, and specialised subsea equipment.
Previous ONGC-Reliance partnerships
This is the second collaboration between ONGC and Reliance in recent years.
ONGC, Reliance, and BP, in 2024, come together to bid for Block GS-OSHP-2022/2, a 5,454-sq-km offshore tract in the Saurashtra Basin, under the Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) bid round IX.
The block, classified as a Category II basin, has significant exploratory potential, and the partners will jointly assess its hydrocarbon prospects.
ONGC and Reliance have adjacent oil and gas fields, for which they hire resources ranging from rigs to offshore supply vessels (OSVs) and tugboats.
Kumar said that since the oil and gas operations of the two companies are complementary, it makes more sense to share resources. The OSV should be able to move from one block or area to another without having to go through the time-consuming exercise of de-hiring and approvals.