The Hindu Business Line : Cairn Energy to invest $200 m in developing new oil finds

HAVING tasted big success in Rajasthan where it discovered one of the largest oil and gas finds in India in recent times, Scottish exploration company, Cairn Energy, plans to be an active participant in the fifth round of blocks being offered under the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP).

Signifying Cairn's bullishness on oil discovery prospects in India, Mr Bill Gammell, CEO, said: ``It is Cairn's belief that considerable reserve addition is possible in existing mature basins and frontier areas of India.'' The company is investing $200 million to develop the recently discovered Mangala and Aishwariya fields in Rajasthan estimated to have in-place reserves of one billion barrels of oil.

Cairn has estimated that the field can produce between 80,000 and 1,00,000 barrels per day of oil once it is fully developed.

The company has time till May this year to finish its exploration after which further investments would be committed to develop the field which is expected to go into production by 2007.

In the last decade of its presence in India, Cairn has invested $1.25 billion in its fields on the KG Basin deep water, including Ravva, Gulf of Cambay and now Rajasthan. The company has discovered or developed commercial reserves of well over 500 million barrels in this period.

Cairn is also planning to do more development drilling in the Ravva field which is now in the plateau phase producing about 50,000 barrels of oil per day. The idea is to extend the plateau phase and extract more oil.

Cairn Energy's stock was the top performer in the London Stock Exchange during 2004. The company, whose stock was quoted at 27 pence in 1992 and a market capitalisation of $10 million is today worth $3billion with the stock quoting at 11 pounds per share.

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