OIL to drill oil and gas reserves at Kollam coast

Oil India Limited (OIL), the Assam-based public sector oil company, is all set to drill deep into the ocean floor off Kollam in search of oil and gas reserves.

Exploratory drilling operations will begin during the second quarter of 2024 if everything works out as planned, a company official told. Preparations are under way to drill one offshore well in the block. The drilling location has been identified as 26 nautical miles from the Kollam port.

Once successful, the project can hugely influence the socio-economic profile of the State and provide a much-required boost to the industrial and commercial activities.

OIL has been awarded the offshore block exploratory rights in the Kerala-Konkan shallow waters earlier and the company carried out seismic surveys in the block between December 2020 and January 2021.

A seismic survey is carried out by sending a shock wave into the earth. The seismic waves that bounce back from the surface are picked up. The time taken by the waves to return to the surface after getting reflected by the subsurface formations is evaluated to predict the presence of oil and gas trapped in an area, according to scientific literature on oil and gas exploration.

The proposed offshore exploratory well will be dug up to the target depth of around 5,500 metres. Logging, the insertion of specialised instruments into a borehole to determine the properties of the geological formations surrounding the hole, will be done to ascertain the hydrocarbon zone. Crude oil/gas will be extracted from the hydrocarbon-bearing zone after analysing the logging data, says the official.

The data obtained from the exploratory well will be analysed to ascertain whether oil or gas can be explored on a commercially viable scale. It is too early to predict whether commercially feasible volumes of oil and gas will be hit at the Kollam project. The Kakkinada unit of the company is in the process of coordinating and hiring the service of machines and experts for the exploration, he says.

Incidentally, the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation that launched an exploration in 2009 off the Kochi coast had abandoned it after failing to hit the target.