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Informist, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026

By Afra Abubacker and Arundathi A R

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI – Oil India Ltd. plans to increase drilling to about 100 wells next year from around 75 wells this year and aims to push crude oil production towards 4 million tonnes in 2026-27 (Apr-Mar), the company management said. Though the management has set a conservative crude oil production target of 3.8 million tonnes for next year, it is pinning its exploration and development plans on delivering higher output.

"On a conservative side, we are planning, or we have indicated that we would do 3.8 million tonnes in 2027, and 2028 will achieve 4.0 million tonnes. I can assure you we are going to (drill) 100 wells, we would aspire to touch 4 million tonnes next year," a top official of the company said in a post-earnings conference call with analysts. 

Oil India expects to have 7.5 million tonnes of oil equivalent in FY27 and 8.0 million tonnes thereafter.  

Though Oil India has the potential to increase its natural gas production to 13 million standard cubic metre per day from 8 million standard cubic metre per day, this is contingent on the development of evacuation infrastructures such as pipeline connectivity and feeder lines, the company said. 

As the newly commissioned units stabilise, Oil India hopes to achieve 4 million tonnes throughput at its expanded Numaligarh refinery by the last quarter of FY27. The Numaligarh refinery is being expanded to 9 million tonnes per annum from 3 million tonnes. "Maybe we will be able to process around 1 million tonnes more than our current capacity of 3 million. Maybe we will end the year FY27 with a 4 million tonnes capacity throughput," the management said. 

The utilisation at the new Numaligarh complexes is expected to improve progressively starting from the last quarter of FY27, with the facility likely to operate at full capacity by FY28. "We are looking at completing the project and taking complete 100% capacity utilisation by Q2 of FY28, but the mechanical completion would necessarily happen before Q4 of FY27," the company said. 

Oil India's crude oil realisation for the December quarter declined to $64.84 per barrel from $73.80 per barrel a year ago. For the nine months ended December, the average realisation was $65.73 per bbl, against $79.35 per bbl a year ago. However, natural gas realisation rose slightly to $6.65 million British thermal units in the December quarter, against $6.56 million British thermal units a year ago. 

The state-owned oil explorer's bottom line was INR 8.08 billion for the December quarter, down nearly 34% on year, marking the fifth consecutive decline. The company's December quarter revenue from operations was INR 49.16 billion, down over 6% on year. It declared its December quarter results after market hours Tuesday. At 1518 IST, the company's shares traded 2% lower at INR 479 on the National Stock Exchange.  End

IST, or Indian Standard Time, is five-and-a-half hours ahead of GMT

Edited by Akul Nishant Akhoury

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