Import of Shale Gas

The Minister of State (I/C) in the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas Shri Dharmendra Pradhan informed the Rajya Sabha in a written reply today that the Indian oil and gas companies are continuously looking for opportunities abroad for tying up equity oil and gas, including shale gas acreages, and/or importing hydrocarbons, including LNG.

GAIL has taken 20% participating interest in a shale gas asset in the Eagle Ford basin in United States of America (USA). Currently, the gas production from these acreages is being sold in local market. GAIL has contracted 5.8 MMTPA of LNG from the USA and deliveries will commence from the last quarter of 2017.

Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL) has acquired 10% interest in integrated (upstream and LNG) Pacific North West LNG project in British Columbia, Canada. The project will produce natural gas from its shale gas acreages. IOCL’s share of 1.20 MMTPA of LNG is slated for supply from 2019 onwards.

The Government has, on 14.10.2013, notified the policy guidelines for exploration and exploitation of shale gas and oil by National Oil Companies (NOCs) in their onland PEL (Petroleum Exploration Lease)/PML (Petroleum Mining Lease) blocks awarded under the nomination regimes.

As per the policy, the NOCs will undertake a mandatory minimum work programme in a fixed time frame for shale gas and oil exploration and exploitation, so that there is optimum accretion and development of shale gas and oil resources.

Under the first phase of assessment of shale gas and oil, exploration and exploitation, at present, 56 PEL/PML blocks (ONGC 50, and OIL – 6) have been identified by NOCs. These blocks are located in the states of Assam (7 Blocks), Arunachal Pradesh (1 Block), Gujarat (28 Blocks), Rajasthan (1 Block), Andhra Pradesh (10 Blocks) and Tamil Nadu (9 Blocks).

ONGC has drilled one well where coring has been completed. In addition, ONGC has collected cores from another 7 wells.