ONGC Inaugurates India’s First Geothermal Power Plant
Oil major ONGC inaugurated India’s first geothermal pilot under Wells to Watts initiative on April 24, 2026. It repurposed an abandoned oil well at Gandhar field in Ankleshwar to generate 450 kw of geothermal energy.
The repurposing of oil well is being done under the government’s Renewable Energy Research and Technology Development Programme (RE-RTD) that aims to harness geothermal energy using closed oil wells.
The Wells to Watts initiative by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) to repurpose abandoned oil wells to harness geothermal energy and diversify India’s energy mix.
India has at least 13,348 abandoned oil wells, according to a report by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. Based on a 2022 report by the Geological Survey of India (GSI), there is a potential of about 10,600 MW of geothermal power in the country. But India has not exploited even 1 MW so far.
Talking to a reporter from MoneyControl in 2025, Mr Santosh Kumar Sarangi, the then Secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has said, “We are trying to harness geothermal energy by using closed oil wells. To explore its commercial feasibility, we have commissioned IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Madras to run a pilot in three abandoned oil wells in Bikaner in Rajasthan.”
ONGC said in a post on LinkedIn that the project demonstrates how legacy hydrocarbon infrastructure can be transformed into reliable, low-carbon energy assets.
