The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Petroleum and Natural Gas has expressed its disappointment over the Petroleum Ministry’s failure to initiate penal action against Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) for its failure to achieve the production outlined under the Field Development Plan (FDP) for the KG D6 block.
“The Committee is disappointed that the reply of the Ministry does not indicate any penal action on the operator for shortfall in achieving the FDP that will arrest the decline in natural gas production. The Committee, therefore, desires that strict monitoring be accorded to operator RIL by the Petroleum Ministry and the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) to ensure the desired outcomes and to reverse the trend of dipping natural gas production from the KG D6 block,’’ the Committee, headed by Aruna Kumar Vundavalli, said in its report tabled in Parliament. At present, the output from the KG block has dropped to 23-24 million metric standard cubic metres a day (mmscmd) from 62-63 mmscmd in August, 2010. The output as per the approved $8.8-billion investment plan should have been 80 mmscmd as on date.
The Petroleum Ministry had told the Parliamentary Committee that it had asked RIL to drill and put on production more gas wells in line with the FDP and take remedial measures to revive the sick wells.
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RIL has drilled only 22 out of the 31 wells that it had outlined in the investment plan for D1&D3, the largest of the 18 gas finds in the KG-D6 block. Of these, only 18 were put on production and even out of those put on production, six wells have shut due to high water and sand ingress. Drop in output from KG-D6 pulled down natural gas production from fields operated by private firms to 21.608 billion cubic metres in 2011-12 from 26.775 bcm in the previous year.