OREANDA-NEWS. May 2, 2012. ONGC has been firming up a robust plan to develop its marginal fields located in Assam, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, as well as in the west coast. However, Bloomberg UTV has learnt that the company is not very sure about the production potential of these fields and fears that it may not get enough interested takers.

According to sources, ONGC is planning to float tenders in the next two months to attract bids from customers, but it may look to sign contracts only for a year and continue renewing the same on annual basis. This to avoid trouble in case the fields stop producing gas, sources added.

Moreover, sources said, the company may also plan to ask customers to submit bank guarantees equal to six week's gas supply. This is because ONGC is worried that it may not actually receive bids for gas from Assam fields, which include Khoraghat, Banaskandi Block-I, Namba and Kasomori fields.

In fact, sources alleged that most fields are seeing production only from 1-2 wells and ONGC may be losing money by flaring associated gas and that is why it wants to rush the process of selling gas in order to monetise whatever little it is currently producing.

Currently on an average these marginal fields are producing not more than 1 million cubic metre of gas, which is quite negligible. ONGC is looking to sell around 600,000 cubic metre of gas on a daily basis.