India has approved a five-year, $8.8 billion offshore oil and gas programme to boost domestic production, reduce reliance on imports, and attract foreign investment, as the country aims to unlock over 600 million tonnes of potential reserves by 2031.
India has approved a five-year offshore oil and gas push worth up to 840.84 billion rupees, or about $8.8 billion, in a bid to lift domestic production and curb the country’s heavy reliance on imported fuel. The plan, known as the National Offshore Exploration Scheme, will run until the end of the 2030-31 financial year and is expected to add more than 600 million tonnes of discoverable oil equivalent to reserves, according to the government.
The programme will fund seismic surveying, data analysis and interpretation, drilling in deepwater and ultra-deepwater blocks, scientific drilling in frontier basins and shared offshore infrastructure for production and transport. It also includes plans for an integrated oil and gas manufacturing and services zone, which the government says should create longer-term commercial opportunities and build technical capacity at home.
India has spent the past decade opening most of its offshore acreage to exploration and overhauling its legal and contractual framework. According to government material, the National Data Repository has also been expanded to make exploration data easier to access, part of a wider effort to make the sector more attractive to investors.
The move comes as India tries to narrow the gap between consumption and domestic output. Crude production at home meets only about 10% of demand, leaving India as the world’s third-largest oil importer and the second-largest buyer of liquefied petroleum gas. Officials have also widened the country’s supplier base, increasing the number of crude source countries from 27 to 41.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi first set out the offshore exploration mission in August last year. The latest approval arrives alongside a separate cabinet decision to back floating solar projects with energy storage, underlining New Delhi’s broader effort to balance energy security with cleaner power generation.
That wider strategy is already showing up in sector policy. The Economic Times reported that the government is preparing an ₹80,000 crore incentive package to draw foreign capital into deepwater drilling, while auctioning 18 deepwater and ultra-deepwater blocks with a bid deadline of September 17, 2026. Business Standard has also reported that India plans to spend more than $20 billion on offshore data acquisition under the Samudra Manthan programme, and that the latest open-acreage licensing round covers 21 exploration blocks across 80,228 square kilometres.
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