ONGC floats first tender to sell Brazil Ostra crude: Report

STATE-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) on May 4 floated a mini tender to sell Brazil’s heavy oil Ostra in June-November, a tender document showed. The tender would close on May 15 with bids remaining valid till May 17.
ONGC Videsh, the overseas investment arm of ONGC, owns a...
27 percent stake in BC-10 block in Brazil.
Prior to May 4 tender, block operator Shell was marketing Ostra oil.
The tender document said ONGC would sell its entire Ostra crude entitlement from the block over the period of the contract.
ONGC has offered to sell 7.50 lakh barrels for lifting in June, while for the remaining period it has not specified any quantity, two trade sources said. BC-10’s current production is about 40,000 barrels per day.
Earlier, ONGC had said it will invest Rs 17,615 crore in the current fiscal to drill a record 535 wells to augment oil and gas production.
The firm drilled 503 wells in 2017-18, the highest number in last 27 years. Of these, 119 were exploratory and 384 development wells.
ONGC said that in order to assess the prospectivity of existing acreages in a time-bound manner and add to the reserves, more focus was laid on exploratory drilling.
ONGC Videsh Limited, a Miniratna PSU under the administrative control of the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, is the wholly owned subsidiary and overseas arm of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC), the flagship national oil company. The primary business of OVL is to prospect for oil and gas acreages outside India, including exploration, development and production of oil and gas. ONGC Videsh owns Participating Interests in 40 oil and gas assets in 19 countries and produced about 23.4 percent of oil and 18.9 percent of oil and natural gas of India’s domestic production in FY’17. In terms of reserves and production, ONGC Videsh is the second largest petroleum company of India, next only to its parent ONGC.
OVL has stake in 40 oil and gas projects in 19 Countries, viz. Azerbaijan (2 projects), Bangladesh (2 Projects), Brazil (2 projects), Colombia (7 projects), Iran (1 project), Iraq (1 project), Kazakhstan (1 project), Libya (1 project), Mozambique (1 Project), Myanmar (6 projects), Namibia (1 project), New Zealand (1 Project), Russia (3 projects), South Sudan (2 projects), Sudan (2 projects), Syria (2 projects), UAE (1 project), Venezuela (2 projects), and Vietnam (2 projects).