Reliance Industries and its partner BP plc on Thursday announced sanctioning of a second project to develop satellite gas fields in the KG-D6 block to help reverse the flagging output at the Bay of Bengal block.
The RIl-BP combine would develop a cluster of four gas discoveries in the Krishna Godavari basin block by 2020-22, the two firms said in a joint statement.
Previously, the two had made a final investment decision (FID) to develop the R-Series gas field by 2019-20.
“The ‘Satellite cluster’ is the second of three projects in the Block KG D6 integrated development. The first of the projects, development of the ‘R-Series’ deep-water gas fields, was sanctioned in June 2017,” the statement said.
“Together the three projects will develop a total of about 3 trillion cubic feet of discovered gas resources with a total investment of Rs 40,000 crore. They are expected to bring a total 30-35 million cubic metres a day (mmscmd) new domestic gas production onstream, phased over 2020-2022,” it added.
RIl is the operator of block KG-DWN-98/3 or KG-D6 with 60 per cent stake while UK’s BP Plc has 30 per cent interest, and Niko Resources of Canada the remaining 10 per cent. The partners have been focusing on developing R-Series, satellite cluster and MJ (D55) deep discovery to revive the flagging output at the block. While the companies did not give investment breakup, they had in August 2013 secured regulatory nod for investing $3.18 billion in developing D-34 or R-Series gas field in the block. In February this year, they got nod for investing around $4 billion in the other two sets of discoveries.
RIl has so far made 19 gas discoveries in the KG-D6 block. Of these, D-1 and D-3 — the largest among the lot — were brought into production from April 2009, but output has fallen sharply from 54 mmscmd in March 2010. They together with MA oil and gas field, the only field in production, currently produce 4.9 mmscmd.