India moves beyond ‘blind exploration’, adopts data-led approach: Hardeep Puri
India is transitioning its oil and gas sector from traditional, isolated exploration methods to a collaborative, data-driven model. This strategic shift aims to enhance discovery rates and energy security by treating seismic data as a shared national resource rather than proprietary silos. By fostering an open ecosystem, the government seeks to reduce uncertainty and encourage broader industry participation in offshore and frontier basin development. Industry stakeholders emphasize that improving data accessibility and quality is critical for attracting investment and accelerating exploration outcomes. Current gaps in seismic coverage, particularly in deepwater areas, hinder progress, prompting calls for targeted data acquisition aligned with upcoming licensing rounds. Adopting multi-client data models is viewed as a viable solution to increase cost efficiency and enable wider interpretation and innovation among diverse operators. This initiative is highly relevant to open_data principles as it champions the removal of barriers to information access. By prioritizing transparency and shared datasets, India demonstrates how open information infrastructures can drive economic growth and technological advancement in resource-intensive industries. This approach aligns with global trends toward open governance, proving that collaborative data use leads to more robust decision-making and sustainable sectoral growth.
Source: ianslive.inPublished on 2026-04-18