The favourite whipping boy of India’s oil and gas exploration and production scene, ONGC, could be the one flowing the most challenging and largest volume of gas from the country’s only ultra deepwater discoveries.

The public sector explorer is looking at producing almost 20 million standard cubic metres a day (mmscmd) by 2019-2020.

Major challenges

About 150 km off the Andhra Pradesh coast is ONGC’s ultra deepwater find of 2007, called UD-1, in the famous Krishna-Godavari block KG-DWN-98/2. The company had been going slow on this area of the block due to technological challenges that it was throwing up.

“The major challenges were sub-zero temperatures and the water depths are of 2,600-2,900 metres,” a senior official from ONGC’s exploration team said.

Now, geared with studies of similar acreages, such as Perdido, Cascad & Chinook, and Independent Hub in Gulf of Mexico as well as Stones in the same region, ONGC has submitted a declaration of commerciality to the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH).

Development plan

In its declaration, ONGC has said that it might process this gas through floating production unit and evacuate through pipeline. By end of this calendar year, ONGC expects to submit a field development plan to the DGH.

ONGC proposes to develop this area of the KG block as Cluster III and drill eight more wells. Together from nine wells (including UD-1), it believes that it can get 19-20 mmscmd of gas.

Though ONGC has not worked out the investments required, it would easily be over a billion dollar project, as drilling single deepwater/ultra -deepwater well costs about $150 million.

Tech help

Earlier this year, the company came out with an expression of interest (EoI) for technological help. “All the major engineering consultants of deepwater/ultra deepwater have shown interest. We would bring one of them as a service contractor,” the official said.

The block has been divided into three clusters by the company.

The area falling under Cluster I will give 1-3 mmscmd of gas and Cluster II will give 15 mmscmd. Cluster I is the portion where ONGC is also in dispute with private sector oil major RIL and its joint venture partners over gas flow.

This block is adjacent to Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL)-operated KG-D6 block and the GSPC block, which has been recently acquired by ONGC.

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