Vedanta Oil & Gas said on Thursday that it held the Rajasthan operating cost broadly steady at $16.4 per barrel in FY26 even as output from its ageing fields declined.
The company attributed the result to operating discipline and an expanding layer of digital and artificial intelligence systems across its operations.
For the year to March 31, 2026, the Rajasthan operating cost was $16.4 a barrel, against $16.6 the year before. Across the oil and gas business, operating cost was $15.5 per barrel of oil equivalent, down from $15.6, it added.
Over the same period, gross operated production fell to 87.2 thousand barrels of oil equivalent a day from 103.2, a decline of 16 per cent that the company attributes to the natural ageing of its fields. Rajasthan alone was down by the same margin.
In a maturing field, the cost of producing each barrel usually rises, because the fixed cost of running the operation is carried by fewer barrels. Here the per barrel cost moved the other way, Vedanta explained.
The company points to three measures behind the cost performance–optimised polymer injection, a more cost effective approach to chemical spend, and efficiency in maintenance activities. Maintenance is where its digital and AI tooling comes in.
“A rod pump usually tells you it is going to fail before it does. The signal was always in the data. What has changed is how fast it reaches the engineer who can act on it. Running digital twins, predictive analytics and advanced process control across our Rajasthan fields is a large part of how we have kept lifting costs steady while the fields naturally decline,” said a company spokesperson.
The company is working on the decline from two directions. During the year it drilled 21 infill wells across its Rajasthan assets, in the Mangala, Bhagyam, Aishwariya, Tight Oil, Raageshwari Deep Gas and Saraswati fields, to slow the fall in output. It drilled a further nine exploration wells, six in the OALP Cambay region and three in the Rajasthan Barmer region.
Published on September 24, 2026
