Essar gets phase III green nod for Ranjiganj

Essar Oil today announced that it has got phase III environmental clearances for coal bed methane (CBM) gas field at Raniganj in West Bengal, allowing it to increase drilling to 650 wells from 135 now.

Clearances by the Ministry of Environment and Forests  would allow the full field development of the Raniganj block, excluding forest area, and will enable Essar Oil to increase production to the targeted level of around 3 million standard cubic metres of gas per day (scmd), up from around 60,000scmd currently, the company said in a statement today.

As of now, Essar is producing CBM from 57 wells out of the total 135 drilled in the field. It has two blocks in Raniganj with an estimated reserves of 113 billion cubic feet (bcf) gross (3.2 billion cubic metres), or 18.8 million barrels of oil equivalent.

“The final phase III environmental approval for Raniganj is an exciting milestone and is the key to us reaching peak production. We expect to grow the coal bed methane business significantly in the coming years as we utilise the learnings from Raniganj to develop our other four blocks,” said Naresh Nayyar, Chief Executive, Essar Energy.  

The company is awaiting a government decision on an appropriate commercial sales price for Raniganj, but in the meantime will continue to sell gas from the block at the approved test sales price. Essar has already contracted gas sales from Raniganj to local industrial customers. The majority of the gas sold from the project is being sold to a new fertiliser plant being built approximately 30km from the Raniganj field.

Of Essar’s eight oil and gas blocks, five are CBM blocks, with more than 10 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of reserves and resources. This includes the large Rajmahal gas field in Jharkand province, which has around 4.7tcf of best estimate prospective resources, located 150km from Raniganj.