State-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) has hired an ultra deep-sea drill rig from Reliance Industries for four years at close to Rs 3,915 crore.
ONGC has hired the rig Dhirubhai Deepwater KG-1 (earlier christened Deepwater Pacific-1) on an assignment basis for $495,000 to $510,000 a day for four years.
“We received the drillship about 7-10 days back. It is currently under inspection at Kakinada and will be deployed for drilling next month,” a senior company official said.
After inspection and loading, the rig would move to its first drill location off the west coast. “We will use the rig to drill an exploration well in a deep-sea block in Kerala-Konkan basin,” he said.
After this, the rig would go to east coast where it will do an appraisal well on the KG basin UD-1 gas find of 2007. “In all, we plan to drill 20 wells using the rig during the four-year period. It will also be used at Mahanadi and Andaman deep sea,” the official said.
ONGC will pay a dayrate of $495,000 to RIL for first 180 days and $510,000 from 181 days onwards. RIL had hired the rig at the same rate from Transocean of US.
The state-run firm, which currently operates 37 deep water and ultra deep water acreages, wanted three ultra deep water rigs each capable of drilling up to water depth of 10,000 ft, 12,000 ft and 7500 ft. As the search for rigs were on, RIL came up with an offer to share its rig.
ONGC had been in talks with RIL for several months for hiring the rig and its board finally gave go-ahead on June 6 after the Brazilian national oil firm Petrobras also evinced interest in taking the rig on assignment basis from RIL.
