Oil India Limited (OIL), India’s second-largest oil and gas producer, has announced a strategic collaboration with France’s TotalEnergies to accelerate crude oil and natural gas exploration in the country’s deep and ultra-deepwater offshore sedimentary basins. The partnership includes support for drilling stratigraphic wells and advancing offshore discoveries. TotalEnergies will provide technological expertise for exploration across OIL’s current and upcoming offshore portfolio. This includes the ongoing appraisal of a gas discovery in shallow offshore blocks in the Andaman Basin, as well as exploration in OIL’s OALP-IX ultra-deepwater blocks in the Mahanadi and Krishna–Godavari basins. The collaboration also covers evaluating prospects under the ongoing OALP-X and future bid rounds, along with technical support for stratigraphic well drilling in offshore Category-II and Category-III basins. Indian exploration companies have increasingly partnered with global technology providers to strengthen production capabilities and unlock deepwater and ultra-deepwater resources. India’s largest state-owned explorer, ONGC, has also partnered with BP for exploration in the Mumbai High fields. Both OIL and ONGC are actively pursuing hydrocarbon prospects in the Andaman Sea to help reduce India’s heavy dependence on energy imports. India currently imports 88 per cent of its crude oil and 50 per cent of its natural gas. OIL described the partnership with TotalEnergies as a major step in its offshore expansion strategy aimed at discovering new reserves and supporting a sustainable energy future for the country. In its quarterly results, OIL reported a 28 per cent quarter-on-quarter rise in net profit to Rs 10.44 billion for the September quarter, up from Rs 8.14 billion in the previous quarter. Revenue increased 8.9 per cent to Rs 54.56 billion, compared with Rs 50.12 billion in Q1 FY26. The company’s oil and oil-equivalent gas (O+OEG) output remained stable at 1.652 MMTOE in Q2 FY26, versus 1.674 MMTOE a year earlier. Its subsidiary, Numaligarh Refinery Ltd (NRL), recorded crude throughput of 753 TMT, up from 683 TMT in Q2 FY25, achieving a capacity utilisation rate of 100.38 per cent.