ONGC to invest $5 bln in KG Basin

State-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has unveiled a Rs.34,000 crore ($5 billion) long-delayed investment plan to develop its KG Basin fields. This will help boost ONGC’s oil and gas output by a fifth in about four years. This is the first major investment announced by an oil firm after the government decided on a policy that almost doubles the prices for gas from difficult reservoirs, such as the fields in KG Basin. The project will yield a peak production of 3.5 mmt of crude oil per year, 17 per cent of the company’s current oil output, and 16.29 million metric standard cubic meters per day (mmscmd), 28 per cent of the current gas output, after four years. The project will produce its first gas in June 2019 and oil in March 2020. ONGC had been wary of investing at current prices, which have fallen about two-thirds. ‘We will be able to achieve the average threshold rate of return,’ Dinesh Sarraf, ONGC Chairman said on why the project is viable now.