Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries (RIL), which discovered the world’s largest gas find at the Krishna-Godavari basin off the coast of Pondicherry in 2002, today started production to become the first deep-sea gas field developer to start gas production within seven years of discovery.
The gas production will add about Rs 4,000 crore to the annual revenues of RIL.
While the global average lead time from discovery to production is nine years in deep-water gas findings, KG-D6 becomes the fastest deep-water development project in the world, within seven years.
The field is estimated to have gas reserves of 11.5 trillion cubic feet (TCF).
Though Reliance Industries has not made an official announcement, sources in RIL said gas has successfully flowed in without major hiccups.
“Gas production from wells started today but it has not yet reached the on-shore terminal at Gudimaga in Kakinada. It will take another 12 hours to technically complete gas production,” said a RIL executive.
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An official announcement is expected tomorrow.
RIL will initially start gas production from eight wells, with an initial output of 10 mmscmd (million standard cubic metres) per day. This will rise to 40 mmscmd by July and later may go up to 120 mcmd, sources said.
“Initially we will supply gas to 15 units of 12 fertiliser and chemical companies,” said the executive. RIL has already signed agreements with 12 fertiliser companies to sell about 15 mmscmd of gas.
For the last one week, oil and gas team of RIL was waiting for final clearance from their internal security assessment team to start production. The line connecting deep-sea wells to Kakinada developed some technical snag a few weeks ago, but this was resolved almost a week back, sources said.
The company was to commence trial production of natural gas from the Krishna-Godavari basin wells by first week of March, petroleum secretary RS Pandey had said, earlier.
The 1440-km long East-West pipeline — India’s longest gas transportation pipeline from Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh to Bharuch in Gujarat was also readied about a week ago, with test firing of gas using supplies from GAIL.
RIL has a tie-up with the Gujarat State Petronet to transport gas from Bhadbhut in Bharuch to RIL’s refinery and petrochemical complex in Jamnagar. RIL will bring gas up to Bharuch and GSPL will transport the same using its existing pipeline between Bharuch and Rajkot and through new pipelines laid up to Jamnagar.