Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Tuesday, Dec 12, 2006
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Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Tuesday, Dec 12, 2006 ePaper |
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Corporate
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Outlook
Pratim Ranjan Bose
Though ONGC has replaced Sagar Bhusan with another deepwater rig Sagar Vijay, the project is unlikely to gain momentum before January.
Kolkata , Dec. 11 Development of ONGC's G1-GS15 deepwater fields in Krishna-Godavari basin may be delayed well beyond the targeted timeframe of April 2007. The project development has already suffered due to lack of weather window and tardy progress on the part of the project contractor. To add to the woes, the company's development drilling in the field suffered a fresh setback in October when the company-owned deepwater rig Sagar Bhusan was damaged and critical equipment were lost under the sea-surface. Though such mishaps are not uncommon in offshore drilling, rough sea conditions in KG basin between October and November made it difficult to retrieve the equipment using remote operated vehicles and the resulting loss of time. As against the targeted development of five production wells in the deepwater G1 field and four in the shallow water GS15 field, ONGC brought into operation two shallow water wells producing roughly 50,000 million standard cubic metres of natural gas per day in July this year before the monsoon had set in. The residual work was scheduled to be taken up beginning October. Described as the country's first deepwater development project using `smart-well' technology, the projected peak gain from G1-GS15 is 2.7 mmscmd of natural gas and associated oil. According to sources, though ONGC has replaced Sagar Bhusan with another deepwater rig Sagar Vijay - also owned by ONGC - and resumed work in the field, the project is unlikely to gain momentum before January when weather condition will improve. Meanwhile, ONGC is striving to complete its three-year deepwater exploration campaign taken up in 2003. Launched in end 2003, the project aimed drilling 37 deepwater wells of which 34 are reportedly drilled so far. The company is currently engaged in deepwater drilling in two blocks KG-DWN-98/2 in KG basin and MN-OSN-2000/2 in Mahanadi. It may be mentioned that ONGC had acquired 90 per cent operating interest in the KG basin block from Cairn India. Before farming out the operating interest Cairn made three discoveries - Annapurna, Padmavati and Kanakadurga in the block in 2001. According to the Directorate-General of Hydrocarbons, of the three discoveries Annapurna tested gas. The other two tested oil.
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