New Delhi, May 11: ONGC Videsh is banking on its Rusian acquisition for a higher output this fiscal.
The overseas arm of ONGC had acquired Russia's Vankor last year, which will contribute to half of its total output of 14.3 million tonnes this year, an increase of 14 per cent from last year.
"In the current year we are targeting 14.37 million tonnes of oil equivalent production," OVL managing director Narendra K Verma told reporters.
In 2016-17, OVL had produced 12.57mt of crude and equivalent natural gas from its assets abroad. OVL had produced 8.92mt of oil and oil equivalent gas in 2015-16.
OVL director (finance) Vivekanand said half of the current year's production would come from Russia's Vankor oilfield in which the company last year acquired a 26 per cent stake.
Vivekanand said the company has started getting its dues from Venezuela, with almost $80 million being paid over the last three to four months. Venezuela owed OVL around $530 million in unpaid dividends and has this year started clearing them in instalments.
Gas push
The oil ministry had pitched for the formulation of a policy that will encourage use of natural gas for power generation, in a bid to rectify a situation where the fuel has been neglected for long.
There were 24,000 megawatt of gas-based power stations languishing as the current situation does not favour electricity generated from imported gas.
Oil Secretary K D Tripathi said at an industry event that the government had last year decided to make India a gas-based economy as natural gas is one of the cleanest and most environment-friendly fuels with extremely low carbon dioxide emission compared to others such as coal and oil. But gas still is not the preferred fuel for power generation.
"We perhaps have to orient our policies to produce more and more power from gas, particularly near metro areas which have concerns about pollution," he said. Tripathi held that availability of gas is not a dampener, but tariff related issues hamper use of the fuel in power generation.
Of the 139.37 million standard cubic metres per day of domestically-produced gas and imported LNG available in 2016-17, less than 32 mmscmd was consumed by the power sector.
Tripathi said India is concentrating on becoming a gas-based economy and moving away from its dependence on fossil fuels.