Oil and Natural Gas Corporation's (ONGC) plans to restore normal production from the fire-hit Bombay High north oilfield have been hit by start-up problems.The floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, Crystal Sea, hired from SeaDrill of Norway, has not been able to start operations for the past 3 months due to a fault in its import riser, a company official said.ONGC planned to use Crystal Sea as a temporary facility at the Bombay High north field while permanent processing facilities are built to replace the platform destroyed in a fire on July 27, 2005.The company had contracted the floater for five years at a dayrate of $ 76,000 starting June. The vessel is being repaired and will be at the field by month end...ONGC has not paid SeaDrill because of the problem and the five-year lease would start once the vessel begins operations, the official said.After the FPSO is in place, ONGC hopes to start pumping 260,000 barrels per day of crude oil from the Bombay High fields by end-October.
