Oilmax Energy Pvt Ltd will spend ₹600 crore ($75 million) over the next two-and-a-half years in developing the three oil and gas fields it owns in Assam, the company’s founder and Chairman and Managing Director, Kapil Garg, told businessline on Tuesday. 

The company owns three blocks in Assam — Amguri, Duarmara, and Tiphuk. Currently, Amguri produces 2,50,000 cubic meters of gas and 500 barrels a day of condensates (a crude oil-like liquid that comes out of the ground along with the gas).

Once the Indradhansh project — the Northeastern gas pipeline that is currently under construction—is completed, production from Amguri would be raised four-fold, to a million cubic meters of gas a day, Garg said. Four new producing wells would be drilled for this purpose, he said. 

In Duarmara, Oilmax is waiting for approval from the State’s forest department. The plan is to drill six wells to produce another million cubic meters of gas a day. The company’s consultants, Gaffney, Cline & Associates, have established that Duarmara has reserves of 4.1 billion cubic meters of gas. 

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So, in Amguri and Duarmara, Oilmax will drill ten wells, each costing about $7 million. In Tiphuk, a field that Oilmax won in the DSF-3 round of bidding (in which the government auctions ‘discovered small fields’), the company plans to drill two side wells, which will cost $5 million. 

The entire project cost of $75 million is to be funded from internal accruals, Garg said, adding that Oilmax is a debt-free company. 

Oilmax, set up by Garg in 2008, is the parent company of the listed entity, Asian Energy Services Ltd (NSE: ASIANENE), and has a 62.5 per cent stake in it — the rest is with the public.

In order to ensure that its Gujarat oilfield subsidiary gets a steady income, Oilmax sold its 50 per cent participating interest in Indrora to Asian Energy. Garg said he had no plans to list Oilmax. 

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