Q&A with Subir Raha
Authors: Raha Subir , Donnelly John 
Published: February 2015

Subir Raha became Chairman and Managing Director of Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd. of India (ONGC) in May 2001. He is concurrently Chairman of ONGC Videsh Ltd. and Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd. He has led the company through significant growth as its market capitalization has grown from U.S. $4 billion to more than $28 billion. The company recently earned the distinction of “Most Valuable Company in India.” Raha joined Indian Oil Corp. Ltd. in 1970. After a series of field and staff assignments in various disciplines, he joined the Indian Oil Board as Director, Human Resources, in 1998 and also oversaw business development, information technology, and corporate communications; he also created and managed several alliances and joint ventures involving the company. Before joining Indian Oil, Raha served the government of India as the Head of the Oil Coordination Committee, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, managing national oil and gas logistics and working on deregulation of the oil and gas industry. Raha is Chairman of the Petrotech Soc., a nonprofit organization for promotion of academic excellence in India’s oil and gas industry, and he is Chairman of the Research Council of the Indian Inst. of Petroleum. He has served as Chairman of the Standing Conference of Public Enterprises and is President of the Indian Inst. of Industrial Engineers and Chairman of the Hydrocarbons Committee of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry. Raha is also President of the Natl. Petroleum Management Program, a learning network of oil and gas companies in India; President of the Indian Soc. for Training and Development; President of the Indian Global Compact Soc.; and a trustee of the Indian Oil Foundation. Globally, he is President of the Intl. Federation of Training and Development Organizations.

His awards include Best Chief Executive of the Year 2002–03 by the Standing Conference of Public Sector Enterprises, Chairman of the Year and Global CEO by Business Baron magazine, the V. Krishnamurthy Award of Excellence for 2004, and the Ernst & Young Manager of the Year Award for 2004. Raha earned an electronics and telecommunications engineering degree from Jadavpur U. and an MBA degree with distinction from the U. of Leeds.

What are ONGC’s main upstream projects?

ONGC’s upstream activities focus on reserves accretion and increasing the production of oil and natural gas. Currently, our main upstream projects include intensive exploration in exploratory acreage, including blocks from the government’s New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP), which is designed to stimulate production in India; developing Sagar Samriddhi, our large deepwater exploration project; and improved-oil-recovery (IOR) and enhanced-oil-recovery (EOR) projects for increasing recovery from our largest 15 fields. These fields contribute approximately 80% of our production.

ONGC has been awarded more than half of the blocks under the NELP in the last four bidding rounds (51 blocks out of the 91 offered). We plan to drill 143 exploratory wells this year. For Sagar Samriddhi, we have deployed three rigs with deepwater-drilling capability and plan to drill a total of 47 deepwater wells in this frontier territory. We are implementing 16 IOR/EOR schemes in our 15 largest fields to increase the recovery factor from an average of 28% to 32%. The fields are at a mature stage and in natural decline but these projects have helped arrest the decline and reverse the trend. The current production profile shows an increase of approximately 54,000 BOPD from the projects.