From 2005 to 2014, oil and gas companies across the hydrocarbon value chain enjoyed a boom in activities. Despite many technological and HSE-related challenges, deepwater development activities during the period also expanded. With the recent downturn, there is huge pressure to reduce costs and increase process efficiencies, as the E&P fraternity collaborates and innovates to find solutions to the major technological, commercial, and environmental challenges of the industry, including deepwater.

In the downturn, capital spending by most of the operators have been reduced but there is a silver lining in India. As per one of the studies, India’s energy consumption will grow by 4.2% per annum till 2035 against global average of 1.4% per annum. India’s robust economic growth coupled with low oil prices has increased the refined product demand substantially. In order to fuel the economic growth, the government has also taken various policy and administrative initiatives to enhance the demand of hydrocarbon exploration and production activities, such as i) announcement of uniform licencing system ‘HELP’ (Hydrocarbon and Exploration Licensing Policy) ii) marketing and pricing freedom for new gas production from deepwater, ultra deepwater and high pressure, high temperature areas subject to certain conditions, etc. Through these measures, it is expected that USD 40 billion of hydrocarbons will be unlocked for production. However to realise this, investment of more than USD 25 billion will be required in next the 2–3 years.

Major oil companies in India such as ONGC and Reliance Industries Limited are making progress in exploration and development of deepwater blocks awarded under NELP round of bidding. ONGC has already submitted an FDP to the Indian Authority for the development of cluster-2 of its prolific deepwater block KG-DWN-98/2 at a total expenditure of USD 5.07 billion. Reliance Industries Limited has also planned an investment to the tune of USD 6 billion for producing more hydrocarbon from their blocks KG-D6 and NEC-25.

In view of the above and considering the potential opportunity India has provided to the upstream E&P industry, the theme of the workshop has been kept as “The India Opportunity—Innovate, Collaborate, Accelerate.” The workshop will concentrate more on strategic optimisation, opportunities in deepwater areas of activities. Two interesting breakout sessions have also been dedicated to the theme of the workshop where participants will discuss and suggest a possible way forward.