ONGC gas output from Tripura to peak in two years

ONGC, India’s biggest oil and gas explorer, plans  to increase its output from onshore gas fields in the north-east basin to 5 million metric standard cubic metres per day (mmscmd).
This would be peak production from the fields in Tripura, where output has been capped for long due to lack of commercial demand.

Now, with its 726.6 mw power plant getting ready in the next two years, ONGC is keen to augment output to both feed the plant and also supply to customers.

A source said the fields are already producing 1.4 mmscmd of gas, which is being fed to the first phase of the power plant. “In the next two years, our power plant will be ready and our fields will feed 2.8 mmscmd to the plant, rest all will be sold,” he said. Some customers, with a total requirement of 3.3 mmscmd, have also been tied up, he said.

Incremental gas production from Tripura is part of the company’s plan of increasing gas output to 18 mmscmd in the next 2-3 years. This includes  6 mmscmd from its C Series field in the west coast by 2014 end and 7 mmscmd from its Daman fields. This gas would be under the non-administered  price mechanism, meaning  the company will have the liberty to sell it at the revised price of $8 per million metric British thermal unit.

ONGC, which announced its third quarter results on Monday, beat market expectations to clock a profit after tax of Rs5,563 crore, though down 17.5% year on year.
Revenues were up 15.9% at `21,089 crore.

Its subsidy burden for the third quarter stood at Rs12,437 crore and Rs37,108 crore for the nine months period ending December.

Finmin issues `25k cr as comfort letters to oil cos
To compensate the three oil marketing companies — Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum — the finance ministry on Monday issued letters of comfort of Rs25,000 crore to meet their under-recoveries in the third quarter.

Timely as it was, before the companies announce their third quarter results, the move will help the companies cancel their Q3 losses to some extent, now just shy of Rs40,000 crore.

According to media reports, of the Rs25,000 crore, Indian Oil will get Rs13,474.56 crore, BPCL Rs5,987.25 crore and HPCL Rs5,538.19 crore.

The actual disbursement, based on the comfort letter of the ministry, will be made after Parliament has approved the supplementary demands for grants in the forthcoming Budget session, said a report.