Rejecting the environmental and agricultural concerns due to exploration and production activities in small oil fields, the Union government on Monday gave green signals to 31 contracts bids of newly discovered small oil fields under its new Discovered Small Fields Policy.

The decision was taken by the Union Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs to further enhance indigenous oil and gas production to reduce import dependency of the country after reviewing all the concerns raised on agriculture and environment in the region.

These small oil fields were offered through an open and transparent international competitive bidding process last year as a part of the new Discovered Small Fields (DSF) policy 2015, which offers improved fiscal terms. Last week some concerns were raised over the impact of oil and gas Exploration and Production (E&P) activities fearing that it might affect agriculture and soil condition in the region, contaminate of ground water table.

“Extraction of Oil and Gas from sub-surface is a well-established practice and the E&P industry uses state-of-the-art technology for the operations and takes maximum care for environmental effects. The operators also get Environment Impact Assessment done before carrying out any drilling activities and other activities,” said a senior officer of the Petroleum Ministry.

He further said that the process of drilling and production requires very limited surface land area and would not affect agriculture or the soil of the entire lease area. Additionally, operators are required to follow strict environmental norms for the use of operational land, he added.

Oil and gas extraction are being carried out from deeper earth area and would hardly affect ground water aquifers which are located at much shallower levels, the Ministry said. “Hydrocarbon extraction method is being used worldwide which has not seen any direct impact to water resources of the mining area. Also, while drilling for oil & gas, cement casing is used, there is no impact on groundwater as such,” the Ministry claimed.

Presently there were three operational Exploration Blocks (Approximately 1461 sqkms)  under Production Sharing Contract System in Tamil Nadu where hydrocarbon exploration is going on. Under Nomination regime, 31 Mining leases (approximately 3500 sqkms) have been granted in the State from where 600 tonnes of Oil and 30 lakhs cubic meter of Natural Gas are produced per day.