India's natural gas production jumps 19.5% in June on back of KG-D6

India's natural gas production jumped 19.5 per cent in June, as Reliance Industries Ltd and its partner BP Plc ramped up output from their eastern offshore KG-D6 block, government data released on Friday showed.

India produced 2.77 billion cubic meters of natural gas in June, up from 2.32 bcm in the same month last year, as per the data released by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

This is the fifth straight month of output rising on a year-on-year basis.

"Increase in gas production is through contributions from D-34 field of KG-DWN-98/3, which commenced from December 18, 2020 (and) wells from satellite cluster (commenced with effect from April 25, 2021)," it said.

Reliance is the operator of block KG-DWN-98/3 or KG-D6 in the Krishna Godavari basin, off the east coast.

The firm started producing from the second wave of discoveries in the block in December. D-34 or R-Series was the first field to start, followed by Satellite Cluster.

Peak production from R-Cluster will be 12.9 million standard cubic meters per day, according to the operators.

Satellite fields would produce a maximum of 7 mmscmd. MJ field in the same block will start production in the third quarter of 2022 and will have a peak output of 12 mmscmd.

The production from KG-D6 more than made up for a fall in the output from fields operated by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation's (ONGC).

ONGC produced 5.6 per cent less gas at 1.68 bcm.

Production from fields operated by the private sector in the eastern offshore was 545.53 million cubic meters in June as compared to 45.62 mmcm a year back, the data showed.

It did not give a field-wise breakup.

India's crude oil production in June slipped 1.8 per cent to 2.48 million tonnes as state-owned ONGC and Oil India Ltd (OIL) produced less.

Oil refineries processed 5 per cent more crude at 18.4 million tonnes in June when compared to the year-ago period, when economic activity had almost come to a halt because of a stringent nationwide lockdown.

Private sector refiners produced 13.6 per cent more crude at 6.9 million tonnes, while public sector refiners processed 2.7 per cent less crude at 10.04 million tonnes.

This is because public sector refineries operated at 85.71 per cent of their capacity, while private ones operated at 94.76 per cent.

The refineries produced 4 per cent more fuel at 19.17 million tonnes in June.