By IANS,
Colombo : An Indian company, engaged in exploring oil in the seas of northern Sri Lanka, has begun drilling a second well, the Sri Lankan government said Saturday.
Cairn Lanka, a subsidiary of Cairn India which had recently announced the discovery of oil in the Mannar basin, has begun drilling a second well in search of oil in the island nation, Xinhua reported.
According to the Sri Lankan information department, Cairn, in the first well, found a 25-metre hydrocarbon deposit at a depth of 3,000 metres. The Indian company has now started work on a second well after its first successful attempt, and also hopes to drill three wells under its exploration programme, which is expected to be completed early in 2012.
Cairn India, earlier this month, announced that it had struck natural gas reserves in the very first well it drilled in the offshore Mannar basin of Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka’s Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa said that if Sri Lanka succeeded in finding oil in the Mannar, which is believed to hold around one billion barrels of oil, the country would no longer have to depend on importing oil from other countries, a prospect that would save billions of dollars to the country.
Earlier this year, Cairn stated that if Sri Lanka’s drilling programme is successful, commercial oil production could be expected by 2014 with a billion barrels.