DINESH KUMAR PANDE, Director (Exploration), ONGC, is a many-sided man. A petroleum geologist by profession, he joined the ONGC in 1976. He has extensive knowledge of the geology and geophysics [G&G] of the various basins of India. His contribution in the sphere of exploration has been innovative and he was instrumental in the discovery of the Ravva oilfield in the eastern offshore. He was the deputy leader of the fourth Indian expedition to the Antarctica. Excerpts from Pande's responses to an email interview: Is it appropriate for the ONGC to go for drilling in deep- and ultra-deep water blocks when there is a worldwide shortage of rigs? How do you plan to tackle this? The exploratory drilling programme in deep-water or ultra-deep water blocks is guided by the commitments made for the blocks and are governed by the petroleum-sharing contract stipulations. The ONGC presently has one contract rig, "Discoverer Seven Seas', apart from its own rig, Sagar Vijay. The current crunch in the availability of deep water rigs is a global phenomenon. In spite of restricted availability of drilling rigs, the ONGC is likely to muster two rigs on its own and efforts are on to acquire more. The Government of India has also been requested to issue moratorium on drilling activities. What are your plans for further exploration and development of the Mahanadi basin? There are reports that you have already struck one trillion cubic feet (TCF) of gas there. The ONGC is continuing its exploration activities in the Mahanadi offshore basin in the five exploratory, deep water blocks awarded to it by the Government of India on sole risk and/or in consortia under various NELP [New Exploration Licensing Policy] rounds. In addition, it is a minor partner in an onland block. Its future plans in the Mahanadi basin are essentially guided by the need to consolidate the discoveries by appraisal/delineation drilling and to test the other prospective play types in deep water blocks. Out of the five deep water blocks, discovery has already been made in blocks MN-OSN-2000/2 and MN-DWN-98/3. Exploratory drilling in the remaining three blocks would be taken up after the integrated evaluation of the G&G data acquired until now. The cumulative range of initial in-place reserve estimate for the two discoveries