Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan on Sunday said the Centre was fully committed to bringing huge investments into Andhra Pradesh in the oil and gas sector.
He was speaking after flagging off the ONGC’s prolific East Coast project of KG-DWN-98/2 by spudding its first well, KDG-A.
The Minister spudded the well from the drill ship, Platinum Explorer, 35- km off the Andhra Pradesh coast in the K-G basin.
He was accompanied by Joint Secretary Amar Nath, Director, Petroleum and Natural Gas, Satyajit Mohanti, ONGC Chairman and Managing Director Shashi Shanker, and Director (Offshore) Rajesh Kakkar.
Mr. Pradhan emphasised that best-in-class project management would ensure achievement of the targets within a fixed time frame. He also highlighted the Union Government’s strong commitment towards Andhra Pradesh, which was emerging as a major oil-and-gas hub of India.
“It is our endeavour to make these major investments in the oil and gas sector and bring prosperity to the people of Andhra Pradesh,” he said.
Job opportunities
Mr. Pradhan also said that the oil sector projects such as the ONGC’s 98/2 would generate large employment and leverage the local services and materials wherever possible as per the ‘Make in India’ policy.
The project envisages a CAPEX of $5.07 billion and OPEX of $5.12 billion over field life of 16 years.
The well, KDG-A, is one of the 34 wells planned under this mega project. The deep-water well has a target depth of 2,346 metres, under a water depth of 518 metres. It is expected to produce around 5,000 barrels of oil per day when put to production.
“The ambitious project of the ONGC is going to be a major contributor to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s target to reduce the nation’s hydrocarbon import dependence by 10% by 2022,” a spokesman for the ONGC said.
The project will cumulatively produce around 25 MMT of oil and 45 BCM of gas, with peak production of 78,000 barrels per day of oil and 15 MMSCMD of gas.
ONGC expects to bring first gas from this project to market by the end of 2019 and oil by 2020.
