All eyes on India's biggest airborne survey
ONGC is expecting imminent oil ministry approval for a massive aerial seismic survey across India.
"Since June (2023), the file is pending with the oil ministry," admits an ONGC source. "But hopefully, we should receive clearance by the end of this month (July 2023)."
He adds ONGC will begin publishing tenders to shoot, process and interpret 143,841-lkm seismic when the oil ministry approves. "Such surveys are usually carried out under the (oil ministry-sponsored) National Seismic Program (NSP)," we hear.
Launched on October 16 (2016) and funded by the Oil Industry Safety Directorate (OISD), the NSP tasked Oil India with shooting 7408-lkm 2D and ONGC with 40,835-lkm in unexplored areas across India. ONGC has explained to the oil ministry why its latest proposed survey is necessary.
But the ministry wants more clarity on what areas overlap a proposed 40,000-lkm aerial survey that Oil India began on May 27 (2023) from Jorhat in Assam. ONGC's survey will cover a landmass of 66,489-sq km - one of the most extensive airborne surveys ever proposed in India.
"ONGC's aerial survey is nearly four times the size of Oil India's aerial survey," we hear. In May-June (2023), ONGC emailed likely bidders, among them UK-based Bridgeporth (now Metatek), Houston-headquartered Bell Geospace (Bellgeo) and South Africa-based Xcalibur, to ask for quotations and plans.
ONGC first issued a notice inviting EoIs on April 24 (2023), entitled: Airborne Gravity Gradiometry (AGG) survey along with Gravity and Magnetic (GM) data with acquisition, processing and interpretation studies. An updated EoI notice was issued on May 17 (2023) after ONGC revised the scope of work and added the Andaman and Digha-Balasore (Odisha) areas.
Eight areas identified for the survey are 11,811-lkm in Manipur; 16,954-lkm in Mizoram-Tripura; 4368-lkm in Cachar-Tripura; 13,702-lkm in Meghalaya-Cachar in the Assam & Assam Arakan Basin (AAAB); 12,000-lkm in Punjab and 24,817-lkm in Vindhyan, both in the Frontier Basin; 43,919-lkm in and around the Andaman & Nicobar Islands and 16,270-lkm in the Digha-Balasore area. "An AGG survey is useful as an alternative to 2D/3D seismic for this rank exploratory area," reads the EoI.
ONGC is expected to increase or reduce the proposed survey area by up to 20%, depending on whether it faces restrictions when flying aircraft near international borders. Read Pakistan.