Cairn India today reported a 6 per cent drop in crude oil output from its flagship Rajasthan block in the March quarter.
Production from the Barmer block fell to 157,338 barrels of oil and oil equivalent gas in January-March quarter from 167,650 boepd in the same period year ago, the company said in a statement here.
For the full fiscal (April 2016 to March 2017), output at 161,571 boepd was 4.7 per cent lower than 169,609 boepd.
After including output from Ravva oil and gas field in the KG Basin and Cambay field off Gujarat, "average gross production across assets for Q4 FY 2017 was at 184,585 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd); 2% higher than the previous quarter, when planned maintenance shutdown was undertaken at the Mangala Processing Terminal," the statement said.
For the full 2016-17 fiscal, overall production declined by 7 per cent to 189,926 boepd "due to natural decline in the fields and planned maintenance shutdown in Rajasthan," it said.
Production at Rajasthan dipped "due to reservoir underperformance at Bhagyam and Aishwariya (fields) partly offset by the volume ramp up from the Mangala (field) enhanced oil recovery (EOR) project and effective reservoir management across fields," the statement said.
Mangala is the largest field in the Rajasthan block and Bhagyam and Aishwariya are the other main fields.
Cairn said encouraging results from the Mangala EOR program and production optimization activities helped offset the natural decline.
The production from EOR has increased to an average of 56,000 boepd in Q4 FY2017.
Gas production from Raageshwari field was maintained at an average of 21 million standard cubic feet per day in Q4 FY2017 with average sales at 4 mmscfd.
"The technical issue between the transporter and the gas buyers has been resolved during the quarter and the gas sales have currently been normalised," Cairn said.
While the Ravva block produced at an average rate of 17,769 boepd for the quarter, Cambay block output was largely stable at 9,477 boepd for the quarter.
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