ONGC plans to aggressively pursue deepwater areas because we see more opportunities there, Director for Exploration O.P. Sinha told reporters on Wednesday (January 28, 2026) on the sidelines of the ongoing India Energy Week in Goa.

“We are going to aggressively pursue deepwater areas because we see more opportunities there, so we will be investing more in deepwater [areas],” he said. Mr. Sinha added that an additional factor entails policy support from the Central government with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement (August 2025) about the National Deep Water Exploration Mission, also termed as, ‘Samudra Manthan’.

“We see a lot of policy support from the government for all operators in the deepwater campaign,” he stated.

Enumerating about the potential areas, Mr. Sinha said, “Comparatively, East Coast is more potentially prolific in terms of deepwater exploration, but we are studying West Coast part also.”

On the East Coast, the exploration director pointed to the Mahanadi basin, the Krishna Godavari (KG) basin and the Andaman basin. Further, Mr. Sinha informed that ONGC would also be looking into deepwater areas of the West Coast and increasing activities in the Kerala-Konkan basin.

Mr. Sinha informed that in recent years, ONGC has been drilling four ultradeep and deepwater wells combined in a year, with the number expanding to eight in the next financial year (that is, FY 2026-27).

The exploration director also stated ONGC’s capital expenditure for exploration this year would be around ₹10,000 crore in the current financial year.