The Union Cabinet, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, cleared the National Offshore Exploration Scheme, named ‘Samudra Manthan’, on Thursday, July 31, 2026, setting aside Rs 84,084 crore for implementation through FY2030-31.
The Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas will run the Central Sector Scheme, which aims to catalyse reserve accretion exceeding 600 million metric tonnes of oil equivalent while expanding offshore exploration and lifting domestic oil and gas output.
More than Rs 43,200 crore of the total outlay is reserved for deep-sea and ultra-deep-sea drilling over the next five years, with support of up to Rs 650 crore per well in deepwater and ultra-deepwater zones, where per-well drilling costs can run from Rs 950 crore to Rs 2,400 crore.
A further Rs 10,000 crore is allocated for common infrastructure, Rs 28,534 crore for offshore data acquisition, and Rs 2,000 crore for oil and gas manufacturing and services zones.
Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw called the initiative a ‘major game-changer’ that would help India substantially raise domestic production and cut foreign currency outflows tied to crude imports.
Officials say the scheme is also expected to create large-scale employment as exploration activity scales up across India’s offshore basins over the coming years.
The petroleum ministry has previously run rounds of offshore acreage auctions under the Open Acreage Licensing Policy, aimed at drawing both public and private sector investment into exploration blocks.
Deep-sea and ultra-deep-sea drilling is considered technically demanding and capital-intensive, which is why the scheme sets aside dedicated funding specifically for wells in those zones.
The scheme’s data acquisition component is intended to help identify new sedimentary basins and improve the accuracy of reserve estimates before companies commit to expensive drilling programmes.
India currently imports a large share of its crude oil requirement, a dependence successive governments have sought to reduce through incentives for domestic exploration and production.
Photo: Indian Navy, Wikimedia Commons, GODL-India
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