ONGC drills at record depth off east coast

Company has drilled a well in record water depths using a rig it had hired from Reliance Industries.

“This is the deepest drilling well of any offshore drilling rig in the world till date. The company’s chartered-hired ultra-deep water drillship, ‘Dhirubhai Deepwater KG-1 (DDKG-1)’, spudded well NA7-1 in the exploratory block of KG-DWN on the eastern coast at a water depth of 3,165 metre (10,385 feet) on January 23 this year,” the company said in a statement.

The statement added that on February 9, ONGC successfully lowered and latched subsea Blow Out Preventer (BOP) and riser on wellhead to drill further to target a depth of 5,625 m.

“This is a unique achievement by the ONGC,” a company spokesperson said.

The rig is owned by Transocean.

It is Transocean, which owns the prior record of 10,194 feet of water depth, set in 2011 by DDKG2 working for Reliance Industries, also on the eastern coast.

Meanwhile, declining production is a major concern for ONGC.

"Production is declining rapidly as most of the blocks are running out of reserves. To arrest this, we have to start production in new fields. In crude oil, monsoon and power shutdowns affected us badly. In terms of natural gas, production was affected in Mumbai High and Cauvery assets due to less offtake by the consumers," Company Chairman and Managing Director Sudhir Vasudeva said.

Crude oil production saw a 3.02 per cent drop to 6.06 million metric tonnes (MT) during the third quarter of the financial year, against 6.24 during the third quarter of the previous fiscal. Natural gas production has also gone down 0.9 per cent to 6.34 million metric standard cubic meters (MMSCM) compared to 6.40 MMSCM during the previous financial year.