| Santanu Sanyal The enormity of Oil & Natural Gas Corporation’s logistics and supply chain management, covering both onshore and offshore operations, is often not easily understood. Mr S. K. Jain, Executive Director, Chief Offshore Logistics, ONGC, while talking to Business Line on the sidelines of the National Conference of the Asian Council of Logistics Management in Kolkata recently, explained some of the challenges the company faces. Excerpts from the interview: How big is ONGC’s logistics and supply chain operation? Quite big. In money terms, the size is worth Rs 2,100 crore annually and we employ nearly 2,000 people. There are 22 onshore locations, having decentralised logistics and supply chain management, where production and exploration are in progress. The offshore operation, with centralised logistics and supply chain management and spread over both east and west coasts, comprises marine operations, air operation, pipeline management, the list is long. | We deploy a number of rigs, some are our own some acquired on hire, and have nearly 5,000 km of pipeline for operation and maintenance. How many rigs do you have? We have a total of 21 rigs, nine of them deployed on the east coast and 12 others on the west. How many of them are on hire? Twelve of them are one hire while nine others are our own. The rigs must be costly to hire? Yes. The daily hire varies from $1,00,000 to $2,00,000, depending on where we operate. The rigs deployed in deep waters are costlier. It is, therefore, not difficult to estimate the cost involved if a rig is kept idle even for a day due to some disruption in supply chain management. We have a supply base at Nhava Sheva which caters to nearly 50 installations. We have a large fleet of offshore supply and other |
Do you have plans for setting up any new supply bases?
Yes, one at Kakinada, on the east coast, and one in Kochi, on the West. On the east coast, our offshore operation is picking up. At Kakinada, we have identified 2,000 acres of land for acquisition. The Kochi base will be small and temporary and therefore there are no plans to acquire land there.
What about your air operations?
Our air operation is critical for our offshore fields employing about 3,000 people. Some of the rigs are deployed far away from the coast.
For example, the rig deployed in Extended Mumbai High is about 105 nautical miles from the coast and the connectivity with it is established mainly by way of helicopters.
ONGC has a fleet of 23 helicopters and together they ferry about 350 people every day from our Juhu helibase that serves several rigs located at various offshore fields such as Tapti, Neelam, Heera, Mumbai High North, Mumbai High South, Extended Mumbai High and Bassein.
The helicopters also fly essential materials on emergency basis at the rate of 15 tonnes a month on an average and emergency medical relief.
Do you have plans to augment your fleet?
Most certainly. We’ll augment the fleet of both supply and other vessels and helicopters. For example, we’ve invited bids for construction of 12 offshore supply vessels (OSVs) at a cost of Rs 740 crore. It is interesting to note that several Indian yards such as Bharti, Pipavav and ABG too have bid for it.
We would also like to acquire four Immediate Supply Vessels (ISVs) at a cost of Rs 50 crore. There are proposals for shortly acquiring on charter 11 OSVs and Platform Supply Vessels at Rs 900 crore and Multipurpose Supply Vessel at Rs 540 crore.
And helicopters?
We are also planning to acquire on charter 11 helicopters at Rs 570 crore. We need helicopters for search and rescue operations, for which we now have to depend on the Indian Navy.
What are your major challenges?
The biggest challenge is to have an uninterrupted supply chain with all our suppliers and vendors. Over the years, the situation has improved but there are rooms for further improvement.
Supply crunches are visible in technology as well as services such as rigs, associated services and inputs, in the availability of specialised vessels, construction of barges, particularly accommodation barges, and coast-based heavy fabrication yard, supply base management, warehousing, material handling and movement and floating production and storage system.
How do you propose to cope with these challenges?
We have already initiated certain steps.
We also want our partners in the industry to be more responsive to our needs so that the shipyards augment their capability, the repair and maintenance of OSVs and other vessels are undertaken properly and within the stipulated schedule, the operations of helicopters become more streamlined and the management of supply bases meets the present day requirement.
We will extend full cooperation but we demand firm commitment from them.
source: www.thehindubusinessline.com
