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ONGC Ltd has asked the petroleum ministry’s directorate general of hydrocarbons (DGH) whether its G4 gas field in the Krishna-Godavari basin is geologically linked to the KG-D6 reservoir of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL).
If there is a flow from ONGC’s side to KG-D6, the government-owned company wants its share to be returned or compensated, said a top executive.
“This is a standard practice globally. Whenever two operators are working on neighbouring blocks, they are supposed to share geo-scientific data. We have asked for this because once we start production of the G4 gas field near the RIL block in 2016, there is a chance of leakage if the blocks are linked,” P K Borthakur, director (offshore) at ONGC, told Business Standard. “An expert would be appointed to come up with a feasibility study on the possibility of sharing the facilities and a decision would be taken soon.”
ONGC had earlier raised a query on its gas overflowing to Niko Resources’ block in Surat. “Though Niko had denied it, (we are) looking into the issue,” said a senior petroleum ministry official.
R S Sharma, former chairman of ONGC and head of the hydrocarbon committee at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, said: “I have never heard of such a practice till now. In my career time, directly or indirectly, none of the geologists have mentioned about the possibility of one company drawing gas from another block.”
RIL’s Krishna-Godavari block is close to ONGC’s DWN 98/2 one. RIL and ONGC had even signed a memorandum of understanding to share the unutilised infrastructure facilities of the former at KG-D6. ONGC had made nine discoveries, an estimated 4.8 trillion cubic feet of gas, in its KG-DWN-98/2. It has a conservative estimate to produce six to nine million standard cubic metres a day of gas by mid-2017 from KG-DWN D & E fields in the first phase. Though the RIL facilities were supposed to handle about 80 mscmd, the production has come down to about 14 mscmd for technical reasons.
