'Production in KG basin delayed till 08'

Reliance Industries will begin natural gas production from its Krishna Godavari deep-sea gas field in the Bay of Bengal from March 2008 as against the earlier schedule of 2006-07.

"There has been delay in getting government nod for laying of the 1400-km Kakinada-Ahmedabad pipeline to evacuate the gas. This has delayed our production plans," a top company official said on the sidelines of the Petrotech conference.

Reliance, which received the right of use (RoU) for the pipeline in May 2001, was to begin gas supplies from May 2007. Its principal customer, state-run National Thermal Power Corp, had scheduled sourcing of 12 million standard cubic meters per day of gas from it in 2007 for its Kawas and Gandhar power plants.

"We could not develop the pipeline since the draft gas policy permitting private sector pipelines was initiated only in September 2003 and is yet to be finalised," he said.

Petroleum Ministry, he said, has cleared only 700-km of the pipeline and approval for the balance was still pending.

Reliance plans to invest 2.39 billion dollars in developing Dhirubhai-1 and Dhirubhai-3 gas fields to produce 40 mmscmd of gas.

The company has till date made 12 gas finds in deepsea block KG-DWN-98/3 (also known as KG-D6) and only the first three discoveries - Dhirubhai 1, 2 and 3 have been declared commercial. Of these, Reliance proposes to develop Dhirubhai 1 and 3 in the first phase of development.