Essar Oil Ltd, the nation's second biggest private refiner, today said gas output from its Raniganj coal-bed methane (CBM) block in West Bengal has crossed 0.5 million standard cubic metres per day, making it India's largest CBM gas producer.
"While nearly 100 wells have been already placed on gas production, additional 155 wells have been drilled and are at various stages of the hydrofracking-completion-dewatering cycle for further gas production ramp up," the company said in a statement here.
Essar Oil said it has built a high quality infrastructure gas conditioning and compression stations, in-field pipelines of 120 kms and last mile pipeline connectivity network to end users of about 60 kms.
"The company anticipates completing the development programme ahead of the May 2016 deadline as per the Contract with the Government of India," the statement said.
With a total investment outlay of Rs 4,000 crore, the Raniganj Project is a first of its kind in India, aimed at responsibly producing methane gas from the coal seams located 1,000 metres or deeper below the ground.
Gas from Raniganj will be supplied to Matix Fertiliser and Chemicals Ltd, having the world's largest single stream plant for ammonia and urea located in West Bengal.
"With unity of conception, technology and team effort, we have been able to register a multifold increase in CBM production to 0.55 mmscmd and expect to ramp up delivery to 1.2 mmscmd over the next few months by bringing wells on production stream which are drilled and presently under completion and dewatering phase," said Manish Maheshwari, CEO-E&P, Essar Oil.
Mumbai-based Essar Oil operates a 20 million tonnes a year refinery at Vadinar in Gujarat. It also has more than 1,400 petrol pumps in various parts of the country and another 600 in various stages of commissioning.
It also has a portfolio of onshore and offshore oil and gas blocks with about 1.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent in reserves and resources.
