India imports a large share of its crude oil and natural gas, and the import bill of nearly USD 144 billion a year is the single largest strain on the current account. The route to reducing it is not only demand substitution but higher domestic output — and most of India's remaining potential lies offshore. The eastern and western offshore basins extend to water depths of up to 3,000 metres and are estimated to hold over 5,600 MMTOE of hydrocarbon potential, with recent finds in the Cauvery, Mahanadi and Andaman basins reinforcing that assessment. The obstacle is economics, not geology. Moving from the award of an exploration block to commercial production typically takes five to ten years, and a single deepwater exploratory well costs about USD 125-150 million. Meanwhile producing fields decline naturally at around 6-7 per cent a year, so a steady stream of new discoveries is needed merely to hold output flat. That combination of long gestation, high per-well cost and geological risk is what has kept private capital out of frontier waters. Samudra Manthan's answer is risk-sharing rather than ownership. The government funds the data layer outright, pays up to half the cost of each qualifying deepwater well, and builds the shared evacuation infrastructure that has left discoveries in the Mahanadi and Kutch basins stranded. The operator still takes the geological risk; the state absorbs enough of the capital risk to make the attempt rational.