Cairn India starts oil exploration in Mannar

COLOMBO (Xinhua):  Sri Lanka began exploring for oil on Saturday in the island’s northwestern Mannar basin, Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa said.

Sri Lankan Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa said that oil exploration work began in the Mannar basin with the assistance of an Indian company.

He told reporters that if Sri Lanka is successful in locating oil  it will no longer have to depend on importing oil from other countries. Cairn India which  has been awarded rights to drill three oil wells over the next few months and Sri Lanka believes there is over 1 billion barrels of oil in the sea off Mannar.

           If Sri Lanka’s drilling programme is successful then commercial oil production can be expected by 2014 with a billion barrels, Cairns said earlier.

Cairn India had contracted a deepwater rig from Japan Drilling to embark on the three-well exploration drilling campaign in its frontier deepwater block in the Mannar basin.

The exploration area is 3,000 square km with water depths ranging from 400 metres to 1900 metres. Cairn Lanka, a subsidiary of Cairn India had signed the Petroleum Resource Agreement with the Sri Lankan government in July 2008 to explore oil and natural gas in the Mannar Basin with an investment of 110 million U.S. dollars.