Reliance Industries and its partner BP Plc of the UK plan to use a floating production system at high sea in the Bay of Bengal to bring to production the deepest gas discovery in the flagging KG-D6 block, according to a PTI report on Sunday.
An executive with the joint venture between the two companies said floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) will be used to bring the gas to the surface, treat it and pump it to the pipeline system that will take it to the shore.
In May 2013, RIL, BP and Niko Resources of Canada had struck a 155-metres thick gas condensate column in the exploration well KGD6-MJ1, which was later named as D55 or MJ-1 discovery. The report said that MJ-1 is one of the three clusters that the partners are focusing on reviving the flagging output at KG-D6.
"The commerciality of the discovery was approved in December last year and we have one year time from that date to submit an investment plan called the field development plan (FDP). If need be, the deadline can be extended by six months. So we have time till mid-2018 to firm up investment," the executive told PTI.
MJ-1 is located about 2,000 meters directly below the currently producing Dhirubhai-1 and 3 (D1 and D3) fields in the eastern offshore KG-D6 block and is estimated to hold a minimum of 0.988 Trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of contingent resource, the report said.
Besides MJ-1, four deep sea satellite gas discoveries -- D-2, 6, 19 and 22 are planned to be developed together with D29 and D30 finds on the block. The third set is the D-34 or R-Series find, the report said.
All three (sets of finds) will produce 30-35 million standard cubic meters per day of gas in 4-5 years, the JV executive was quoted by PTI as saying.
RIL and BP had in mid-June this year announced investing Rs 40,000 crore in the three sets of finds to reverse the flagging production in KG-D6 block.
The government had in 2012 approved a $1.529 billion plan to produce 10.36 mmscmd of gas from four satellite fields of block KG-DWN-98/3 (KG--D6) by 2016-17.
The four fields have 617 billion cubic feet of reserves and can produce gas for eight years. However, the companies did not begin the investment citing uncertainty over gas pricing, the report noted.
After the government has allowed a higher gas price of $5.56 per million British thermal unit for yet-to-be- developed gas finds in difficult areas like the deep sea, RIL and BP have decided to take up their development.
