ONGC has appointed Intec Sea of Malaysia to help it develop the KG-DWN-98/2 block, which sits next to the block owned by Reliance-BP-Niko consortium, in the K-G basin.

ONGC won the block in the first round of biddings — NELP-1 — back in 1999.

Output estimates

The block has been estimated to hold 500 million tonnes of oil and oil equivalent gas — 100 mt of oil and 445 billion cubic metres or 1.33 trillion cubic feet of gas — which makes it ten times as big as the Ravva field in the K-G basin, in the deepwater seas off the Andhra Pradesh coast. The block could potentially produce 75,000-90,000 barrels of oil a day.

“The consultant is drawing up drilling plans and scheduling year-wise rig deployment plans,” sources in ONGC told Business Line today.

“Specialised dynamically-positioned semi-submersible and floater drilling rigs are being lined up,” the sources said.

Intec Sea has worked for India previously, mostly on the Oman-India oil pipeline project.

ONGC has spent $1.3 billion on the block, made four oil finds and seven gas discoveries there, but is yet to produce anything.

The reasons are said to be “technical”.

ONGC’s Director – Offshore, TK Sengupta, said in an ONGC in-house publication that “In deep waters, the experience of private players would serve as a lesson to ONGC.”

ONGC has divided the 7,295 sq km block into two parts — Northern and Southern Discovery Areas. The company intends to invest $9 billion in the Northern region alone.

Recent reports quoting ONGC top brass have said the company wants to see hydrocarbons flowing from the block not later than April 2018.

Consortium

Incidentally, the block was won by a consortium comprising ONGC, Cairn Energy and Norway’s Statoil.

At one point, such was the level of international interest in the block that companies like Brazil’s Petrobras hoped to pick up stakes in the block. But execution delays have caused all of them to drop out.

Cairn and Statoil are in the process of selling back their stakes to ONGC.

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