Oil exploration in Mannar:

Cairn asked to submit EIA

Chamikara Weerasinghe

The Marine Pollution Prevention Authority (MPPA) will give a detailed terms of reference to Indian oil giant Cairn India this week to submit an Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) to explore oil and natural gas deposits in the northwestern Mannar sea basin.

Cairn Lanka (Private) Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cairn India is optimistic that there will be commercial quantities of hydrocarbon in the third block of Mannar Gulf after their surveys, sources at the Marine Pollution Prevention Authority told the Daily News. Cairn Lanka said 2D and 3D seismic data revealed there are structures indicating prospects of petroleum to be discovered upon drilling of the seabeds in deep water.

The company, which has discovered 40 oil and gas deposits in India, has proposed to drill three oil wells in the Mannar Gulf after the results of their recently conducted high resolution 3D seismic surveys of the seabeds off shores on the blocks allocated to it by the Government for oil explorations, sources said.

Meanwhile, regulations on off shore oil explorations and exploitations are also to be gazetted soon. The Government entered into a petroleum resources agreement with Cairn India on July 7, 2008, to explore oil and natural gas in the Mannar basin with a focus to get into the map of oil producing countries.

In its search to find oil reserves in the sea it has granted oil exploration rights to Cairn India. This oil exploration project costs over US $100 million. The agreement was signed in Colombo by former Petroleum Development Minister A.H.M. Fowzie and Cairn India Chief Financial Officer and Executive Director Indrajit Banerjee.