Churning the Ocean: A ₹84,084-Crore Bet That India's Missing Oil Lies Offshore
Summary
The Union Cabinet on 31 July 2026 approved Samudra Manthan, the National Offshore Exploration Scheme, a Central Sector Scheme of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas with an outlay of ₹84,084 crore for implementation up to FY 2030-31.
●The scheme funds large-scale acquisition, processing and interpretation of seismic data, accelerated deepwater and ultra-deepwater exploratory drilling, scientific drilling in frontier basins, common offshore production and evacuation infrastructure, and an integrated Oil and Gas Manufacturing and Services Zone.
●The Government expects it to catalyse reserve accretion of over 600 million metric tons of oil equivalent.
●The context is deteriorating: India's crude import dependence reached a record 88.7 per cent in 2025-26 while domestic crude output fell from 29.7 million metric tonnes in 2021-22 to 28 MMT. For an aspirant, the scheme is a case study in whether public spending can reverse a geological and investment deficit.
India's sedimentary basins are classified by exploration maturity into categories from Category I, which have established commercial production, down to frontier basins with little or no drilling.
●The bulk of India's producing acreage lies in a handful of Category I basins, notably Mumbai Offshore, Krishna-Godavari, Cauvery, Assam-Arakan and Cambay, while very large offshore areas remain barely explored.
●Upstream policy has moved through successive regimes: the New Exploration Licensing Policy from 1999, which awarded blocks through competitive bidding on work programme and profit share; the Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy from 2016, which introduced a uniform licence for all hydrocarbons, revenue sharing instead of profit sharing, and marketing and pricing freedom; and the Open Acreage Licensing Programme, which lets investors themselves nominate blocks of interest from a National Data Repository rather than waiting for government-defined rounds.
●Samudra Manthan sits upstream of all of this, funding the data and infrastructure that make bidding possible.
The binding constraint on Indian exploration has been information and infrastructure, not licensing terms — which is why a data-and-drilling scheme follows two decades of licensing reform.
◎ In Simple Words
Most of the oil and gas India uses is bought from other countries, and the amount we produce at home keeps falling. A lot of the sea floor around India has never been properly scanned, so companies do not know where it is worth drilling. The government has set aside a very large sum to scan the seabed, drill test wells in deep water, and build shared equipment so exploring becomes less risky.
Factual Pointers
Practice · 2 questions
Samudra Manthan, the National Offshore Exploration Scheme approved in July 2026, is administered by which ministry?
Under the Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP) introduced in 2016, which of the following was a key change from the earlier New Exploration Licensing Policy?
Industry, MSME & Services
This sub-topic has appeared in 11 UPSC Prelims questions.