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India witnessing renewed surge in oil and gas exploration: Petroleum Minister
Jul-30-2025

Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Hardeep Singh Puri has said that India is witnessing a renewed surge in oil and gas exploration, particularly in offshore regions, underscoring the country’s vast untapped hydrocarbon potential.  Puri further said that the opening of nearly one million square kilometres of erstwhile 'No-Go' offshore areas in 2022 has been a landmark development. This move has unlocked significant exploration frontiers, especially in deepwater and frontier regions such as the Andaman-Nicobar (AN) offshore basin, and has been instrumental in triggering the current momentum in offshore activity.

While the favourable geology sets a strong foundation, Puri emphasized that the real breakthrough has come from the government’s strategic policy interventions and a new exploration approach. The revised strategy has enabled aggressive acquisition of seismic data, initiation of both stratigraphic and exploratory drilling, and increased engagement with international exploration partners, several of whom have shown keen interest in the newly accessible frontier blocks.

Minister further underscored that the current momentum in offshore and frontier exploration is a result of a series of progressive policy reforms introduced since 2014. These include the transition from the Production Sharing Contract (PSC) regime to the Revenue Sharing Contract (RSC) model in 2015, the launch of the Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP) and the Open Acreage Licensing Programme (OALP) in 2016, the establishment of the National Data Repository in 2017–18, and the deregulation of crude oil marketing in 2022. Together, these measures have fostered a liberal, investor-friendly exploration environment backed by targeted incentives for frontier exploration, stratigraphic drilling, and data acquisition.


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