Industry Odisha Bureau, Oct 02: Vedanta Oil and Gas plans about $200 million for Rajasthan in 2026-27. It wants Mangla above 150,000 barrels a day through enhanced oil recovery. Ageing reservoirs and India’s oil gap make the task urgent.
Vedanta Oil and Gas is trying to coax more crude from tired reservoirs. The company, formerly Cairn India, plans to invest about $200 million in 2026-27. The ₹2,000-crore programme covers Mangla, Bhagyam and Aishwariya in northern Rajasthan. Its focus is not new territory, but older wells already producing.
Mangla Takes Centre Stage
Mangla is the heart of the plan. Its 2004 discovery turned Barmer into India’s largest onshore oil-producing region. Today the Mangla oil field produces about 80,000 barrels per day. Vedanta wants that figure to climb above 150,000 bpd. That is a steep climb for a field discovered over 20 years ago.
Technology Replaces Easy Growth
Mature oil fields grow harder to sustain with every passing year. Jim Johnny Gast, Vedanta’s interim chief executive, said producing fields face natural declines of 1-3%. Simply holding output steady therefore takes effort. Growth demands enhanced oil recovery, or EOR.
Polymer flooding thickens injected water so it pushes oil more evenly towards wells. Alkaline-surfactant-polymer, or ASP, injection goes further. It helps loosen oil trapped in rock pores. Well interventions repair or upgrade existing wells to restore flow. None of these methods guarantees results, but each can help speed up recovery.
The 41-to-60 Challenge
The clearest yardstick is the recovery factor. It measures how much discovered oil is actually brought to the surface. Recovery from Vedanta’s producing wells has reached 41%, Gast said. The company has set a target of 60%. The aim is to extract far more from oil already discovered. That makes reservoir productivity, not fresh discovery, the core of this investment.
Pressure in the Numbers
The urgency shows in recent numbers. Vedanta’s output averaged 77.7 kboepd in the first quarter of this financial year. That gross operated figure was 17% below 93.2 kboepd a year earlier. This company-wide measure differs from Mangla’s standalone output.
Rajasthan Carries the Portfolio
Rajasthan accounted for 81% of the company’s total production. Such concentration means its fields largely decide Vedanta’s overall output. A revival there would register across the portfolio. A slip would be felt just as sharply.
India’s Widening Oil Gap
The stakes extend beyond one company. Gast said India’s crude production stayed at 0.87-0.99 mmboe over 20 years. Consumption, he said, rose from 2.65 to 5.6 mmboe in that time. Demand has climbed steeply while domestic output has barely moved. Every additional domestic barrel therefore carries strategic weight for India’s energy security. Yet one operator’s programme cannot close that gap alone.
Beyond Rajasthan
Vedanta is also building the northeast into a new gas-growth hub. Gast said the company wants to explore smaller sedimentary basins. He described them as holding vast opportunity. That gas strategy runs alongside, not instead of, the Rajasthan oil push.
Recovery Becomes the Strategy
For Vedanta, growth in Rajasthan now means recovery, not easy expansion. The geology that made Barmer famous is maturing. Technology must now do the heavy lifting. Whether Mangla reaches 150,000 bpd will depend on how reservoirs respond. India’s appetite for oil, meanwhile, has kept rising. Ageing fields are being asked to run faster just to keep pace.
