India’s offshore oil and gas sector just received its biggest policy push in years. On July 31, 2026, the Union Cabinet cleared a scheme that will shape hiring, contracting, and skill demand in the upstream sector for the rest of the decade — and its effects will reach far beyond the coastline where the drilling actually happens.
Oil and Natural Gas Corporation is set to accelerate deepwater exploration under the Samudra Manthan programme, with plans to drill 150 deepwater wells over seven years and pursue nearly 5,600 million tonnes of oil equivalent of deepwater and ultra-deepwater hydrocarbon potential. The Rs 84,084-crore scheme is intended to reduce exploration risk and attract fresh investment into India’s offshore basins, building on discoveries already made at Utkal and Konark in the Mahanadi Offshore Basin.
This isn’t a one-off drilling campaign. The programme runs on a seven-year window with expenditure extending through FY2030-31, and ONGC has already spudded its first well roughly 23 nautical miles off the Odisha coast. Beyond the Mahanadi basin, the company has flagged promising indications in the Cauvery basin as well, along with an established gas presence in the Andaman region, which tells us this is designed as a multi-basin, multi-region effort rather than a single-site project.
Why deepwater exploration is different — and why it needs more inspection, not less
Onshore and shallow-water oil and gas work already demands strict quality control. Deepwater and ultra-deepwater operations raise the stakes considerably. Wells are drilled in far harsher conditions — extreme pressure, difficult subsea access, and much higher costs of failure. A weld defect or an undetected flaw that might be a manageable issue onshore can mean a multi-million-rupee failure, a safety incident, or months of delay in a deepwater environment where repairs are far more complex to execute.
That’s precisely why offshore programmes lean so heavily on inspection and quality assurance at every stage — from the pipes and structural components used in rig construction, to the welds joining subsea pipelines, to the pressure vessels and equipment packages installed on platforms. Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) methods such as ultrasonic testing, radiography, and magnetic particle inspection exist specifically to catch these flaws before they become failures. QA/QC engineers oversee documentation, compliance, and inspection test plans to make sure every stage of construction meets the codes — ASME, API, and equivalent international standards — that offshore operators and their contractors are bound by.
In other words, a programme of this scale doesn’t just need geologists, drilling engineers, and rig crews. It needs a large and steady supply of certified inspectors and quality professionals working across every contractor and subcontractor involved in the chain.
A programme like this creates work far beyond ONGC itself
Samudra Manthan is structured to attract private and international investment by reducing exploration risk through large-scale seismic surveys and by demonstrating basin prospectivity — which means the hiring impact won’t be limited to ONGC’s own payroll. Seismic survey companies, EPC contractors, fabrication yards, offshore logistics providers, and specialist inspection agencies all tend to scale up their own teams once a national programme of this size gets underway. Each of these players independently needs QA/QC staff, NDT technicians, and welding inspectors on their own projects — multiplying the total demand well beyond what a single headline figure suggests.
What this means if you’re based in Kerala
For students and career-switchers in Kochi and across Kerala, a national offshore programme might feel geographically distant — but the career path isn’t. Certified NDT technicians, QA/QC inspectors, and CSWIP-qualified welding inspectors are hired nationally and internationally, not just locally. Many professionals trained in job oriented Oil and Gas courses in Kerala already work across India’s offshore and onshore basins, as well as in Gulf countries where similar certifications are recognized and in high demand.
The bigger lesson from programmes like Samudra Manthan is timing. Large infrastructure and exploration initiatives typically move faster than the talent pipeline can keep up with. Contractors bidding for offshore work need inspectors who are already certified and job-ready — not candidates who start their training after the job postings appear. That gap between announcement and hiring peak is exactly the window worth acting in.
Building the skills this moment calls for
At Reliant Institute of Oil & Gas, our NDT, ASNT Level II, and QA/QC Mechanical Engineering programs are built around the same hands-on inspection skills that offshore and EPC projects require from day one — real equipment, real testing methods, and training aligned with the certifications employers actually ask for.
A seven-year national programme doesn’t create a short burst of hiring — it creates a sustained multi-year demand curve. The best time to position yourself for it is before that curve peaks, not after.