Greater Noida, Jan 14: Vedanta group firm Cairn India has drawn up plans to invest Rs 3,000 crore over the next three years into its Barmer oilfields in Rajasthan to pump up volumes.
This would be the single-largest IOR/EOR (increased oil recovery/enhanced oil recovery) programme in India. “The scheme will help recover over 90 million barrels of oil in the Rajasthan block and sustain the peak output for a longer time,” Cairn CEO P Elango said on the sidelines of Petrotech-2014, the oil ministry’s biennial jamboree.
Cairn at present produces about 185,000 bpd (barrels per day) from the Rajasthan block and plans to raise the output to 200,000 bpd. In dollar terms, the project would cost $575 million, which is part of $3 billion capex the company had outlined last year.
More than 80% of the investment, or roughly Rs 12,800 crore, would be made in the Barmer oil block. Of the current production, about 150,000 bpd comes from Mangala, the largest field among over two dozen discoveries made by Cairn in the Barmer block.
The company has plans to ramp up production from the Bhagyam field as well and also looking at producing oil from two smaller fields in the Barmer hills during the current fiscal, Elango said. The company has plans to drill 100 new wells to monetize new reserves found in the Rajasthan block, whose resource potential is 7.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
Cairn is also evaluating its options to monetize the gas discovery in its block in Sri Lanka, Elango said. The company, which is also the operator of India’s biggest onland oilfield, has reported a net profit of Rs 11,919.7 crore in last fiscal. Its net sales stood at Rs 17,524.2 crore in FY’13.
Cairn’s profits have also helped its parent Vedanta Resources to post 21% growth in its core profits (EBITDA) at $4.8 billion for the year ended March 2013 and 163% growth in its net profit attributable to shareholders at $ 157.4 million.
Cairn alone contributed 49% of Vedanta’s EBITDA. Last year, the oil major had reported 19% growth in its production at 205,323 barrels of oil equivalent per day.