ONGC opened up yet another chapter in the history of exploration when the first well in Palar Basin was spudded by Mr Narendra K Verma, Director (Exploration) in a location some 55 km from Chennai city on May 25, 2014. The Basin is sandwiched between two major prolific basins of the South – KG in the north and Cauvery in the South.
ONGC won the block PR-ONN-2005/1 spread over around 1800 sq km jointly with Tata Petrodyne Ltd (20% stake) in the seventh round of NELP bidding. It was granted an extension in the drilling of two wells under the Minimum Work Programme (MWP). The second well planned is around 7 km from the current site and will be drilled well within the time frame stipulated in the MWP.
Speaking at the spudding ceremony Mr Verma said that the well NAAA reminded him of the iconic wells like Lunej-1, Disangmukh-1, Narsapur-1, PY-1 which opened up new basins in the country. “Palar will not be an exception and you are on the threshold of creating history. The sediment type and basinal settings give us this hope”, he remarked.
The Director assured of a massive upgradation of all hardware including rigs, vessels, floaters etc to achieve the mission objective. He also hoped that the subsidy burden on ONGC would gradually reduce, giving it enough resources to venture into ambitious projects in India and abroad.
