(MP)
State-owned ONGC will invest over Rs 21,500 crore to develop India’s deepest gas discovery by 2022-23, helping it more than double output from its prime KG basin block. Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), which had last year firmed up an investment of Rs 34,012 crore ($5.076.37 billion) in bringing to production 10 oil and gas discoveries in its Bay of Bengal block KG-DWN-98/2 (KG-D5), plans to invest another Rs 21,528.10 crore ($3.2 billion) in developing the ultra-deepsea UD-1 find.
“We have submitted to the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons a declaration of commerciaility (DoC) for the UD-1 find. We will submit a final investment plan, called the field development plan, by end-2017 and hope to bring the discovery to production by 2022-23,” ONGC Director (Offshore) Tapas Kumar Sengupta said. ONGC plans to drill nine wells on the discovery that lies in water depths of 2,400-3,200 metres and will produce a peak output of 19 million standard cubic metres per day.
The company had previously decided to develop other discoveries in KG-D5 block and leave the UD-1 find in the same block for a later date as it thought there was no technology available to produce gas from such water depths. Sengupta said that there are consultants who have showed to ONGC that discoveries deeper than UD-1 have been put to production in recent times, particularly in Gulf of Mexico. “A recent expression of interest (EoI) meeting we had for developing the KG finds saw several consultants offering solutions for such water depths,” he said.
