India’s domestic crude production has been on a consistent decline. In FY22, it slipped to 28.4 MMT, the lowest in over two decades. Despite being the third-largest consumer of oil, the country depends on imports to meet 85% of its needs. High reliance on imports has inflated India’s crude import bill and widened the trade deficit. State-owned ONGC, which accounts for a bulk of domestic crude production, has seen its output decreasing steadily. One major hiccup in India’s ambition to reduce import reliance has been its ageing oil wells. Production has been hampered significantly as output from mature wells has reduced and there have been no new major discoveries.
Falling output
The chart shows India’s year-wise domestic crude oil production. Crude output has been consistently falling since FY15. In FY22, India’s crude production fell to 28.4 MMT (million metric tonnes), the lowest in at least 24 years. Hover over the chart to find the exact figure
