ONGC begins drilling near Chennai.

When Narendra Kumar Verma, Director-Exploration of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, broke a coconut, symbolically, on the rotary table of a rig and pulled a lever recently, it was a first of sorts for the national oil company.

The company began drilling its first well in the Palar basin, some 40 km north of Chennai, at a scientifically chosen patch of land in the middle of hundreds of mango trees.

In a couple of months, the 'drill bit' - the steel-toothed contrivance that chips off rocks and bores into earth - will hit its target 2 km below the ground. Drilling wells is to an oil company as regular as casting nets to a fisherman, and typically only one in 10 drills yields anything. But the first well in the PR-ONN-2005/1 block that ONGC won in the seventh round of auctions in 2005 seems to be laden with hope. In his speech before the spud, Verma said the Palar basin was situated between two prolific producing regions of Cauvery and Krishna-Godavari.


HBL