The Hindu Business Line : AP village gears up to handle gas from ONGC well-head

THE coastal hamlet of Odalarevu (dockyard in Telugu) in Amalapuram district of Andhra Pradesh is gearing up to become the first terminal that will handle virgin gas from the country's deepwater exploration by April 30, 2006.

In recent months, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), which was drilling the G-1 structure in its Rajahmundry Asset in the Krishna Godavari basin, had its task cut out.

Getting the drill pipes in position over the well-heads was proving to be an engineering challenge for the ONGC technicians. Faced with two-directional currents while lowering the drill pipes down 430 metres into the sea-bed, it took a while for them to ensure that the pipes reached the destined locations at G-1, located 28 km offshore.

Given that the working window in the East coast is only 10-12 weeks against 24-30 weeks a year in the case of the West coast, handicaps are many in meeting the deadline. This would separate the boys from the men as far as Indian deepwater gas production is concerned, as these are production wells, not exploratory ones.

Consider the efforts that are under way to make this happen: Pipelines under fabrication in Japan; and flexible pipelines in France. There are also sub-sea equipment and controls in Singapore; and main and infield umbilicals that will connect onshore facilities with deepwater wellheads that are getting ready in Scotland. The brief from ONGC to Clough Engineering Ltd, Australia, the engineering, procurement and construction contractor executing the $215.35-million work, is quite clear — get things in place so that 2.7 million metric standard cubic meters per day of gas and 1,500 barrels of oil a day can be produced from April 30 onwards.

Talking to Business Line, Mr S. C. Gupta, Executive Director, Chief Engineering Services, ONGC, said the contract is for the production of 1 million tonnes (mt) of low-sulphur crude oil and 6 billion cubic metres of natural gas over the expected field life of 15 years.

The pipelines will start arriving by the month-end and laying will commence by the first week of January. Drilling of the five wells in the G-1 structure is going on. While this is entirely done by ONGC, re-entry and well completions has been handed over to Schlumbereger, France. Thus, over the next eight months, five production wells will be drilled with sub-sea completions. The well-fluids will be transported by dual sub-sea pipelines rising from a depth of 429 metres to the processing facilities on-shore. The integrated project will create India's first `digital oil and gas field,' incorporating remotely monitored `smart' wells.

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