The Indian Union Cabinet has approved the National Offshore Exploration Scheme, known as Samudra Manthan, with a total allocated budget of Rs840.84bn ($8.83bn) through the financial year 2030–31.
The decision, taken in a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, marks the beginning of a government-backed programme aiming to expand oil and gas exploration in India’s offshore areas.
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The scheme, overseen by the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, is described as India’s largest offshore exploration initiative to date.
According to the Indian Government, the Samudra Manthan scheme represents a shift from policy development to implementation following a series of reforms introduced by the government to encourage domestic hydrocarbon production.
The initiative is expected to help reduce India’s dependence on imported crude oil, with the country currently ranking as the world’s third-largest consumer and facing an import bill of roughly $144bn each year.
Under the plan, financial support of up to 50% of the cost of deepwater exploration drilling will be provided by the government to lower investment risks for companies.
The Samudra Manthan scheme targets development in deepwater and ultra-deepwater areas. These include the Krishna-Godavari, Cauvery, Mahanadi and Andaman basins, where drilling a single well can cost between $125m and $150m.
The programme is organised around four main components. The first is the acquisition and processing of offshore seismic data, which has an allocation of Rs285.34bn.
The second involves drilling 60 deepwater wells, with a budget of Rs432bn. For each well, government support is capped at either Rs6.75bn or 50% of eligible drilling costs, whichever is lower.
The third component is the construction of common offshore infrastructure hubs, with Rs100bn earmarked for this purpose. The fourth involves the establishment of oil and gas manufacturing and service zones, with Rs20bn allocated to encourage domestic manufacturing.
The Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas stated that successful exploration could increase domestic oil and gas output from the current 454.46 million barrels of oil equivalent (mboe) to 586.40mboe annually.
India’s hydrocarbon resource base may also rise from 11.73 billion barrels of oil equivalent (bboe) to 16.13bboe, the ministry stated.
The government estimates that this could reduce the annual crude oil import bill by approximately Rs1tn.
It also highlighted that domestic hydrocarbon fields are currently subject to natural production declines of 6–7% each year, making ongoing exploration important for maintaining output levels.
Modern seismic surveys and new infrastructure are expected to support the commercialisation of discoveries and help private investment by de-risking exploration activities, the government added.
Furthermore, it said that government, legislative and contractual changes such as the Oilfields (Regulation and Development) Amendment Act, 2025 and new rules for petroleum and natural gas, have improved transparency, contractual stability and ease of doing business in the sector over the past decade.
The performance metrics for state-owned companies the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India have also been adjusted to focus more heavily on exploration, the government claimed.
Additionally, the government said that Samudra Manthan is intended to “de-risk offshore exploration, catalyse private investment, strengthen domestic production and build enduring national capability across the offshore exploration and production value chain”.
In June, ONGC signed a technical services contract with bp for its fields in the Western Offshore Basin. BP will act as the technical services provider for this area, which includes 43 blocks on India’s western continental shelf.
