Hindustan Oil Exploration Company (HOEC), which won rights to develop two already discovered, marginal fields in a recent government auction, says it sees early monetisation of the one in Arunachal Pradesh.

The Kherem field in Arunachal Pradesh lies about 60 km from HOEC’s Dirok field, which is expected to start producing gas next month. Kherem is a small field with 3 million barrels of oil — that can produce 200 barrels a day to start with — and 17 billion cubic feet of gas. Twinning Kherem with Dirok will neither be difficult nor expensive, P Elango, Managing Director, HOEC, told BusinessLine . The 16.45 sq km Kherem field, discovered by Oil India Ltd (OIL) in 1994, has a couple of exploratory wells doing down.

These need to be converted into producing wells, which will call for only a small investment. Initially, the oil could be trucked to OIL’s Digboi refinery. Incidentally, OIL is an equal partner with HOEC in the Kherem field.

The other field, B-80, off the Mumbai coast, is more difficult and expensive, but just as exciting and remunerative. The 56 sq km field, discovered by ONGC in 1997, has in-place reserves of 13.20 million barrels of oil and 10.50 billion cubic feet of gas and can produce 4,000 barrels of oil and 7.5 million cubic feet of gas a day. HOEC has a 40 per cent interest in the field and will operate it.

Elango said developing B-80 will take a couple of years — the company has four years time to bring it to production, as per the auction conditions. At the moment, its attention and resources are directed towards the Dirok field and the nearby Kherem, and PY-3 and PY-1 fields off the Puducherry coast in the Bay of Bengal.

While developing these fields, the company will conduct various studies for B-80, such as those to delineate the wells and those required for laying pipelines, Elango said.

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