A total of 560 paper submissions from 66 companies and 74 universities, representing 35 countries have been received for an upcoming oil and gas conference in India organised by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE).

The 2012 SPE Oil & Gas India Conference and Exhibition (Ogic) is the second edition of the event, taking place from March 28 to 30 in Mumbai.

According to a basic statistics report for 2009−2010 on Indian petroleum and natural gas, prepared by the ministry of petroleum and natural gas, India has total reserves of 1,201 million metric tonnes (MMT) of crude oil and1,437 billion cu m (BCM) of natural gas as on April 1, 2010.

This makes the Indian oil and gas industry, one of the most influential industries in stimulating India's economic growth.

Sudhir Vasudeva, CMD, ONGC said: “India’s crude oil production from April to September 2011 reached 19.224 MMT against 18.297 MMT in April to September 2010, while its natural gas production from April to September 2011 reached 24.405 BCM against 26.663 BCM in April to September 2010.”

“This increase is justified by the various technological advancements that enable the industry’s professionals to maximise production from existing resources and explore new conventional and unconventional resources,” he added.

Vasudeva continued: “The industry requires constant development in technologies. The multi-disciplinary event, Ogic, allows the Indian subcontinent oil and gas professionals to meet with their international and regional peers, discuss the current and emerging technologies, share their past experiences, and highlight the challenges they face and their solutions.”

“Therefore, it is imperative that we receive the right quality of technical papers covering a broad range of exploration and production aspects for this event, and this year we are very pleased with the number and unmatched-quality of the papers,” he concluded.

The Ogic programme committee has selected 116 paper proposals from 38 companies and 19 countries. – TradeArabia News Service