Cabinet approves Rs 84,084 crore offshore exploration scheme Samudra Manthan

The Union Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the ‘Samudra Manthan’ National Offshore Exploration Scheme on Thursday, July 31, 2026, with a total outlay of Rs 84,084 crore for implementation through FY2030-31.

The Central Sector Scheme, to be run by the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, aims to catalyse reserve accretion of more than 600 million metric tonnes of oil equivalent while expanding offshore exploration and domestic production.

More than Rs 43,200 crore of the outlay is set aside for deep-sea and ultra-deep-sea drilling over five years through 2031, with support of up to Rs 650 crore per well in deepwater and ultra-deepwater zones, where drilling can cost Rs 950 crore to Rs 2,400 crore per well.

The scheme further allocates Rs 10,000 crore 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 scheme a ‘major game-changer’ that would help India substantially raise domestic production and conserve foreign currency spent on crude oil imports.

The scheme is also expected to create large-scale employment as exploration activity picks up across India’s offshore basins in the coming years, officials said.

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.

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.

Photo: Indian Navy, Wikimedia Commons, GODL-India