ONGC has appointed Intec Sea of Malaysia as a consultant for the KG-DWN-98/2 block in Krishna-Godavari (K-G) Basin.
ONGC won the block in NELP-1, back in 1999. The block sits next to the block owned by Reliance-BP-Niko consortium.
The block has been estimated to hold 500 million tonne of oil and oil equivalent gas — 100 million tonne of oil and 445 billion cu mtr or 1.33 trillion cu ft of gas — which makes it ten times as big as the Ravva field in the K-G basin, in the deepwater seas off the Andhra Pradesh coast.
The block could potentially produce 75,000-90,000 barrel of oil a day.
ONGC has spent $1.3 billion on the block, made four oil finds and seven gas discoveries there, but is yet to produce anything. The 7,295 sq km block has been divided into two parts — Northern and Southern Discovery Areas. The company intends to invest $9 billion in the Northern region alone.
ONGC expects to start production at the block by April 2014.
Incidentally, the block was won by a consortium comprising ONGC, Cairn Energy and Norway’s Statoil. But execution delays have caused all of them to drop out. Cairn and Statoil are in the process of selling back their stakes to ONGC.
Intec Sea has worked for India previously, mostly on the Oman-India oil pipeline project. The consultant is drawing up drilling plans and scheduling year-wise rig deployment plans.
More Project Info:
KG-DWN-98/2 Oil Exploration (NELP-I) Project