Mangala (meaning bliss) has lived up to its name for Cairn India. Five years earlier, the company struck black gold at the RJ-ON-90/1 oil block deep inside the stark, unforgiving wilderness of the Rajasthan deserts.
The block, later named Mangala, completed 100 days of production today and has so far produced about a million barrels of crude, generating over $17 million revenue for the central and state governments.
When it comes on production at a peak rate of 175,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd), Mangala, located at the Barmer-Sanchore basin, will account for 25 per cent of India’s domestic crude production. India currently imports over 2 million bopd. Domestic production is about 650,000 bopd.
Cairn owns a 70 per cent stake in the block, while Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), India’s largest producer, owns the rest.
“It’s a significant milestone looking at the scale of operation. A field of this size needs gradual ramp-up and till now it has been behaving as per the expected lines,” an official from Cairn India said.
The crude produced in the past 100 days has been dispatched to Mangalore Refineries and Petrochemicals (MRPL), a subsidiary of ONGC in Mangalore and Reliance Industries’ (RIL) refinery in Jamnagar. State-run Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) is expected to get its share of supply from the Rajasthan field in early 2010, once the pipeline comes onstream. The pipeline would eliminate the trucking of oil in place at present. The Mangala crude is currently being trucked to the Gujarat coast and then being shipped to MRPL.
The government has granted approval to establish multiple delivery points at Radhanpur and Viramgam for sales to IOC’s Panipat and Koyali refineries, respectively. And, to establish an additional delivery point at Kandla port for delivery of crude to MRPL and other coastal refineries, until the pipeline for transporting crude from Barmer to Bhogat is operational.
The Mangala field is producing about 20,000 bopd from four wells. To date, 36 wells have been drilled, of which 26 have been completed and made ready for initial production. The wells drilled to date will support the ramp-up in production profile for the Mangala field.
Sources say Train Two (50,000 bopd capacity) is expected to be ready by early 2010 and construction of Train Three (50,000 bopd capacity) is targetted to attain the Mangala plateau production of 125,000 bopd in the first quarter of 2010.
The company’s relationship with Rajasthan dates back to 1997, when it bought out Shell in Bangladesh and acquired a share of the Rajasthan field as part of the same deal.
