Question : National Seismic Programme

(a) whether the Government has recently launched a ‘National Seismic Programme to understand the hydrocarbon potential of the country and if so, the details thereof along with estimated financial outlay earmarked for the programme;
(b) whether the Government had earlier conducted any such surveys in this regard and if so, the details thereof;
(c) whether the Government proposes to develop and set up a National Data Repository in the country; and
(d) if so, the salient features of the same along with its benefits likely to be extended to oil exploration and production

MINISTER OF STATE (I/C) IN THE MINISTRY OF PETROLEUM & NATURAL GAS
(SHRI DHARMENDRA PRADHAN)

(a) Government of India has started the National Seismic Programme (NSP) which aims to undertake a fresh appraisal of sedimentary basins across India, especially where no/scanty data is available in order to have a better understanding of the hydrocarbon prsopectivity. Under this programme Oil & Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) has been entrusted to carry out 40835 LKM of 2D seismic data acquisition, processing & interpretation (API) in 22 onland Indian Sedimentary basins in 18 States and Union Territories. Oil India Limited (OIL) has been entrusted to carry out 7408 LKM of 2D seismic data acquisition, processing & interpretation (API) in the North-Eastern States. Year wise financial outlay of the plan is given below:
Year ONGC OIL Total
2016-17 517.45 89.01 606.46
2017-18 828.03 324.95 1152.98
2018-19 733.59 297.48 1031.07
2019-20 80.37 62.11 142.48
Total 2159.44 773.55 2932.99

(b)Under Nomination and Production Sharing Contract (PSC) regime, 13,02,924 LKM of 2D Survey and 4,12,451 SKM of 3D Survey has been conducted by Public Sector Undertaking and Private and Joint Venture companies in their awarded acreages upto 2015-16. In addition, Directorate General of Hydrocarbon (DGH) on its own has conducted 28,279 LKM of 2D Survey through Government of India funding, 12,235 LKM of 2D Survey under Joint Venture mode and 36, 655 LKM of 2D Survey under Non- Government Funding mode.
c) & d) Government has set up a National Data Repository (NDR) at DGH, Noida. NDR will provide a world-class data storage and retrieval infrastructure for all E & P activities. The Salient features of NDR include:
• Preserves and disseminates oil & gas information data
• Promotes and regulates exploration and development activities for hydrocarbons in India
• Will help in implementing OALP wherein acreages can be chosen by the E&P companies on the basis of assessed prospectivity as seen from the data available through NDR.
There are many perceived benefits likely to extended to oil exploration and production from NDR:
• Cost savings from the elimination of redundancy
• Secure storage and disaster recovery
• Common standards for data submission and delivery
• Simplified data transfer to operators
• Instantaneous data distributions/sharing


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