In late September, Oil India (OIL) announced the presence of gas recovered during intermittent flow on testing at its Vijaya Puram-2 well in the offshore eastern Andaman block AN-OSHP-2018/1, with testing ongoing. This is the second well drilled by OIL in its Andaman campaign, which commenced in November 2024, with the Blackford Dolphin semi-submersible rig contracted for a three well $154 mm programme. Gas analysis indicates 87 % methane content. OIL’s announcement stated this to be the first hydrocarbon occurrence in its campaign, so by implication, the first well, Vijaya Puram-1, located to the west of the islands in block AN-OSHP-2018/2 and drilled between November 2024 – March 2025, was dry. Vijaya Puram-2 spudded in May 2025 after some downtime associated with the rig move. OIL has the rig on firm contract into 2026 with an option to extend until later in the year.
While there has been significant social media speculation about the size of the Vijaya Puram-2 discovery and the basin’s potential, little has been reported from ONGC’s concurrent three well campaign in the region using the DDKG1 drillship. The first well, the ultra-deepwater ANE-E, was drilled between March-May 2025, in the AN-UDWHP-2020/1 block to the far east of the islands. This block is in the backarc basin which potentially extends into the Gulf of Moattama Basin offshore Myanmar, where the PTTEP-operated Zawtika gas field came onstream in 2014.
ONGC’s second well in the campaign was drilled between May-July 2025, in the westerly ultra- deepwater block AN-UDWHP-2020/2, which has geological affinities to the outer Bengal Fan as much as the Andaman Island arc. If successful it would have been a valuable calibration point and potential basin opener for offshore Bangladesh.
For the third well in ONGC’s campaign, the DDKG1 drillship returned in late July to the AN-UDWHP-2020/1 block, where the well, 26km to the south-east of ANE-E, is ongoing as of mid-October. While it looks frontier from India’s perspective, it is only 100km SW of Zawtika and potentially plumbed into the sedimentary system productive offshore both Myanmar and Sumatra. Further announcements are awaited.
