RIL, ONGC eye facilities-sharing off India

July 30, 2013
Privately owned Reliance Industries Ltd. and state-owned Oil & Natural Gas Corp. have signed a memorandum of understanding to explore sharing by ONGC of RIL’s production facilities offshore eastern India.

Privately owned Reliance Industries Ltd. and state-owned Oil & Natural Gas Corp. have signed a memorandum of understanding to explore sharing by ONGC of RIL’s production facilities offshore eastern India.

The area includes RIL’s deepwater KG-D6 fields, where first-quarter production totals were 500,000 bbl of crude oil, down 41% from the year-earlier quarter; 60,000 bbl of condensate, down 58%; and 49.2 bcf of natural gas, down 53%.

RIL attributes the production declines to geologic complexity, natural declines, and higher-than-expected water encroachment. It reported another KG-D6 discovery, which it calls D55, earlier this year (OGJ Online, May 24, 2013).

ONGC has blocks in the area. In an announcement about the MOU with RIL it said deep water “constitutes a major component” of its plans to make “substantial investment over a period of the next 5 years” in exploration and development.