Vick Saxon, Managing Partner & Director, VZFOX in Conversation with Emerging Manufacturing Magazine
1. With India’s oil import dependence rising and domestic production declining, how can better reservoir management and field reactivation improve recovery from mature assets?
India imported 88.7% of its crude in FY26. At the same time, domestic production slid from 29.7 million tonnes in FY22 to 28.0 million tonnes in FY26. Alongside exploring new reserves, improving recovery from existing fields is an important opportunity to strengthen India’s domestic production. Mature and brownfield assets remain the backbone of domestic output and hold great potential, so that is where the effort should go.
Better reservoir management can be strategized through a deep analysis of how each layer and each well behaves. A field is not one uniform system, and remaining oil can sit in isolated pockets across it. Reactivation can then mean infill or recompletion screening, injection optimization and pressure management, and EOR/IOR evaluation. Done well, this helps operators get more oil out of the assets they already have. Additionally, every option should be analyzed on its technical and economic merit, so that capital goes to the wells and interventions that add the most value.
2. How can subsurface engineering, reservoir characterisation and Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) help Indian operators unlock ageing fields?
An aging field behaves very differently from the way it did when it was first drilled. Its pressure regimes shift, water gets harder to manage, reservoir compartments respond differently, and sweep efficiency can slip. Subsurface engineering gives operators a way to read those changes in the right light, taking all these factors into consideration. Reservoir characterisation, combined with production and pressure analysis, shows where the remaining hydrocarbons reside and what stands in the way of recovering them.
That clarity is what makes EOR and IOR possible. Instead of applying a technique and hoping for the best, operators can screen which methods suit which compartments and weigh the technical and economic aspects before committing capital. In Canada, horizontal drilling reached oil that operators had once bypassed and written off, and we have worked with waterflood, EOR, and CO2-EOR. These long-applied tactics can work here as well. The technical principles travel, but the tricky part is understanding whether those development solutions fit India’s reservoirs and operating conditions. We work alongside Indian geoscientists, engineers and operating teams to facilitate that process, blending local talent and long-proven Canadian expertise.
3. With over two decades of subsurface engineering experience, what differentiates VZFOX from other service providers, and how can its expertise address the specific challenges facing Indian operators?
The first thing that sets VZFOX apart is how we work. We are not tied to any particular technology, process or software, and our approach is built on acting as an extension of the client’s team. We are also a boutique firm, and we work like one. Rather than doing a blanket study, we get to the real problem and fully understand the reservoir and the technical challenge in front of us. We stay involved in the technical decisions, the road map, the regulatory path and the commercial case, and we challenge assumptions where the data calls for it.
For Indian operators, that means technical depth across geology, reservoir engineering, production, injection, facilities and regulatory interfaces, backed by more than two decades of Canadian experience in mature fields, EOR/IOR and CO2 injection. India has strong engineering talent, and that is the biggest advantage. What we bring is field experience and a willingness to be on the ground when a project needs us.
4. What opportunities does VZFOX see in India, and how can Canadian expertise support Indian operators? What are the company’s growth plans for the market?
We see the biggest opening in fields India already operates. Our initial focus is advisory work on mature-field revitalisation, reservoir optimisation, EOR/IOR, injection and pressure management, field-development studies, subsurface technical assurance and CCUS and carbon-storage feasibility. Canada has a long track record in exactly these areas. Its oil industry is more than a century old, and the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin alone has seen over 850,000 wells since 1901. That history, along with our client base, has shaped how we work and built practical know-how in mature fields, sour gas, EOR/IOR and CO2 storage, which can help Indian operators optimize the local capability that already exists.
On growth, we are taking small, well-thought-out steps. We’re planning to set up an office, with up to five people, by the end of this year. The office will also serve as a global capability center for our overseas projects. We want a small number of anchor relationships with operators, engineering organisations, EPCs and project developers, and to engage in recurring technical work around them. We have set no revenue target yet. We would also like the relationship to run both ways, supporting Indian companies and investors who want to evaluate Canadian energy opportunities, and bringing Indian talent into our Canadian projects.
