BOI and Cairn India inks agreement for Mannar Basin exploration

The Sri Lanka Board of Investment (BOI), the governing body for promoting industrial investments in Sri Lanka and Cairn Lanka (Pvt) Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Cairn India has entered into an agreement for a commitment of an initial investment of more than $110 million towards the exploration of hydrocarbons. The program of work will be in the Block SL 2007-01-001 which is offshore North West Sri Lanka and covers approximately 3,000 square Kilometres in water depths of 200 metres to 1800 metres in the Mannar basin.

Chairman and Director General BOI Sri Lanka Dhammika Perera and Cairn Lanka Elango P Director signed the agreement. The signing for the exploration licence to explore oil and natural gas in the Mannar Basin took place, earlier in July this year, in Colombo with Minister for Petroleum and Petroleum Development Resources A.H.M Fowzie and Indrajit Banerjee, an Executive Director of Cairn India. The Block SL 2007-01-001 was awarded to Cairn India in the recent Sri Lanka bid round.

The work program includes proposals to acquire 5,000 km of 2D, 1,000 km2 of 3D seismic and drill three wells in the initial three years of the eight-year exploration period.