India's self-sufficiency outlook bleak

This paper reports on India's push to stem the rising tide of oil imports and turn around its flagging oil production which continues to experience setbacks. State owned Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) has slashed its oil production target to 510,800 b/D in fiscal 1992-93 from 580,000 b/d in fiscal 1991-92. It is the latest sign of the state owned oil sector's growing inability to meet rapidly rising domestic oil demand through a sizable increase in production. The government previously had pegged the year to year decline at only 20,000 b/d. But present estimates show that the year to year drop will be five times that volume. Government and ONGC officials previously had fixed a target of 1 million b/d of domestic production by fiscal 1994-95, which other industry officials called too ambitious to achieve without a major discovery going on stream in just 2 years. That situation is being aggravated by ONGC's decision to shut in certain wells in the Bombay high area as part of a major field rehabilitation program, expected to result in a loss of 60,000 b/d this year. The deeper than expected decline in production means a bigger than expected oil import bill, which had eased the past fiscal year because of lagging oil prices in light of economic recession and an end to the Persian Gulf war