State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has hired two deep-sea drilling rigs for up to $585,000 per day, about 15 per cent more than what it paid for a rig that Reliance Industries (RIL) leased to it.
ONGC has hired Platinum Explorer rig from Vantage for $585,000 a day and Sevan Driller-II from Norway's Sevan Marine ASA for dayrate of $524,900, Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Jitin Prasada said in a written reply to Lok Sabha here today.
Both the rigs will be available from December 31, 2010.
In comparison, ONGC paid $510,000 per day charge for taking DDKG-1 rig from Reliance, Prasada said.
Reliance had originally hired DDKG-1 from British Virgin Island-based Deepwater Pacific-1 Inc for $510,000 per day and sub-leased to ONGC at same rates beginning July 30, 2009.
Prasada said ONGC has so far drilled six exploratory wells using DDKG-1 and seventh well was under drilling. ONGC has so far paid Rs 972.22 crore for the rig.
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Besides, ONGC had, beginning July 25, 2008, hired Discovery Seven Seas deep-sea drill ship from Transocean of US at a dayrate of $357,000. It has so far drilled nine wells using this rig and has paid Rs 1,186.25 crore in hire charges.
"ONGC owns one deep water rig named Sagar Vijay," he Prasada said. "Additionally, ONGC has also charter hired four deep- water drilling rigs, out of which 2 are in operation (DDKG-1 and Discovery Seven Seas) and other two (Platinum Explorer and Sevan Driller-II) are likely to be deployed by December 31, 2010."
To a separate question, Prasada said ONGC plans to produce 44.50 billion cubic meters of additional gas in 2011-16. ONGC had produced 23.11 bcm of gas in 2009-10.
"ONGC plans to develop its hydrocarbon discoveries (mostly gas) in the eastern offshore KG basin on the hub based concept and in this connection provisional capital and operational expenditure works out to about $10 billion," he said.