EAGE Student Webinar
Student Webinar by Moses Nathaniel Duggirala
The global economy continues to depend heavily on petroleum due to the slow pace
of energy-transition initiatives. This dependence is especially relevant for India, where
aging fields and the lack of significant new discoveries have resulted in declining
production. Meanwhile, high-impact deepwater discoveries in Suriname, French
Guiana, Guyana, Senegal, and Namibia signal the need to revisit India’s vast yet
underexplored deep-offshore domains.
Reassessment of plate-tectonic concepts, supported by bold exploration ideas and
advanced geophysical technologies, offers new insights into India’s deep and ultra-
deepwater potential. Recent long-offset seismic, gravity, and magnetic investigations
have improved understanding of major tectonic features—including the 85°E Ridge,
oceanic fracture zones, transform faults, the Laxmi Ridge, and Bengal Fan system—
and their associated hydrocarbon habitats.
The episodic rifting of Gondwana from the Jurassic through the Cretaceous shaped
the mega-regional rift-drift architecture of the deepwater provinces of Western India.
For example, plate-tectonic reconstructions position Kerala Offshore Basin along the
NE Proto-Mozambique Ocean margin, with Antarctica serving as the primary sediment
source. Subsequent transform-fault tectonics generated extensive sub-basalt
structural traps, warranting immediate exploration. Applying similar tectono-
stratigraphic reasoning to the Bay of Bengal reveals the enormous, yet largely
untested, petroleum potential of the Bengal Fan.
As the world’s largest deep-sea fan system, the Bengal Fan extends across three
sedimentary sub-basins separated by the 90°E and 85°E ridges, with sediment
thicknesses ranging from 2 km to 16 km. Integrated analysis of crustal ages, Curie
isotherms, and paleo-heat flow suggests that the western basin favours thermogenic
hydrocarbons, whereas the central basin is more conducive to biogenic gas
generation. In the absence of drill data from the Cretaceous section of the Bengal
Fan, analogues from the South Atlantic—where DSDP/ODP cores have confirmed
organic-rich black shales in 4000–5000 m water depths—provide strong justification
for its source potential. Given the similar breakup histories of the Bay of Bengal and
South Atlantic, extrapolation of established South Atlantic hydrocarbon-yield models
(e.g., Leblanc, 1995) implies a substantial, possibly world-class, resource base for the
deeper Bengal Fan.
Overall, India’s deepwater provinces present a promising frontier for future oil and gas
exploration. Realizing this potential, however, requires focused, product-driven
research supported by fit-for-purpose geoscience datasets to unlock the widespread
hydrocarbon opportunities concealed beneath India’s deep offshore basins.