India’s oil & gas player exploring possibilities for building its first offshore wind project

As the offshore oil and gas sector continues to move forward with acting on both corporate and governmental energy transition strategies, the offshore wind sector is increasingly seeing new players entering the scene, one of the latest being an Indian oil and gas production company.

Namely, India’s largest oil and gas exploration and production company, the state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), is actively exploring possibilities to develop an offshore wind project, after announcing its first moves in the offshore wind sector last year.

According to a statement from the company’s Chairman & Managing Director Subhash Kumar in ONGC’s Annual Report 2020-21, the company has commissioned a study for a pilot offshore wind project. ONGC has not revealed any further details on the project in its annual report, such as the project location and the potential capacity, but it has added that the pilot project study will assess the opportunities in the sector.

Back in May 2020, ONGC signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with its compatriot NTPC Ltd. to set up a joint venture company focused on renewable energy and explore the possibilities for the development of offshore wind and other renewable energy projects both in India and overseas.

Under its energy roadmap for 2040, ONGC is targeting 10 GW of installed renewable capacity over the next two decades. Currently, the company has has a renewable portfolio comprising 153 MW of onshore wind and 31 MW of solar, with further 20.2 MW of solar power capacity under development.

According to the to World Bank’s report on eight emerging markets’ potential from 2019, India has 112 GW of fixed-bottom and 83 GW of floating offshore wind potential, with best opportunities located in Tamil Nadu and Gujarat.

Although the country has been working on getting its first offshore wind projects over the past several years, it has been slow in reaching the development stage, even though it had initially set an offshore wind target of 5 GW by 2022 and 30 GW by 2030.

Some of the latest bigger moves within the policy arena were made two years ago, when India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) issued draft offshore wind energy lease rules for the development of projects within the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Later that year, the country’s National Institute of Wind Energy (NIWE) launched a tender seeking the turnkey supply of four offshore LiDARs for two sites.