Amid continued tussle between the Petroleum Ministry and the Mukesh Ambani owned Reliance Industires Limited (RIL), the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) on Monday took a tough stand and asked the company to come back with revised plans to drill more wells in the KG-D6 fields in view of the fall in gas production.
Both the Petroleum Ministry and the DGH did not buy the arguments forwarded by RIL team that digging of more wells will not solve the problem of falling pressure at its Eastern offshore KG-D6 and asked it to submit a concrete plan on digging more wells as per the commitment made by it.
DGH Director General S. K. Srivastava said after the meeting that RIL and its Canadian partner Niko Resources in the Field Development Plan (FDP) committed to drill 31 wells on Dhirubhai-1 and 3 fields in the KG-D6 block by April 2012 to raise output to 80 million standard cubic metres per day (mscmd). RIL is currently producing 40 mscmd from 18 out of the 20 wells drilled on D1 and D3 fields. Another 8 mscmd is being produced from the MA oil field in the same block. “RIL will have to come up with a proposal to drill more wells. DGH wanted the company to drill wells in outer area of the field and not on the main channel which is facing declining pressure,'' he added.
The DGH has maintained that output at D1 and D3 fields would have been 61.88 mscmd if RIL had drilled its committed 22 wells. RIL had in 2006 won government nod to invest $8.836 billion in Dhirubhai-1 and 3 fields in KG-D6 block after promising an output of 61.88 million cubic metres a day from 22 wells by April 2011 and 80 mscmd from 31 wells by 2012.
