Oil India Limited (OIL) and TotalEnergies on Wednesday signed a “Technology Service Agreement” in New Delhi to deepen their strategic collaboration on exploration activities in deepwater and ultra-deepwater offshore frontiers across India’s sedimentary basins, including the drilling of stratigraphic wells mandated by the government.
In a filing to stock exchanges, OIL said the agreement establishes a framework to tap TotalEnergies’ world-class expertise across the deep and ultra-deepwater exploration value chain for both its existing and upcoming offshore projects. The partnership will support the ongoing appraisal programme of a gas discovery in shallow offshore blocks in the Andaman Basin, as well as exploration efforts in OIL’s OALP-IX ultra-deepwater blocks in the Mahanadi and Krishna-Godavari basins.
The agreement also covers the evaluation of opportunities under the ongoing OALP-X and future bid rounds, along with technical support for stratigraphic well drilling initiatives in offshore Category-II and Category-III basins.
The signing took place in the presence of Petroleum and Natural Gas Secretary Pankaj Jain, Additional Secretary Praveen Mal Khanooja, and OIL Chairman and Managing Director Ranjit Rath. The agreement was executed by Sangkaran Ratnam, CMD of TotalEnergies Gas and Power Projects India Pvt. Ltd., and Saloma Yomdo, Director (E&D) at OIL, alongside senior officials from both organisations.
OIL said the collaboration marks a significant milestone in its efforts to expand exploration in offshore frontier areas as part of India’s wider push to discover new hydrocarbon reserves and secure a sustainable energy future.
India has been intensifying efforts to boost domestic fossil fuel output, with a particular focus on deepwater exploration in the Andaman region. Earlier this year, Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said exploration activities in the Andamans were showing “good news” and could potentially be India’s “Guyana moment,” noting that vast stretches of seabed remain untapped.
India currently imports around 80 per cent of its crude oil and about half of its natural gas requirements, prompting it to diversify sourcing and secure supplies from as many countries as possible.
