ONGC sets world record by drilling in deepest water

Drilled 10,385-feet deep water. Average drilling depth is around 3,000-5,000 feet

India’s largest oil company ONGC has added a world record to its kitty by drilling in the deepest water depth of 10,385 feet.

This is the deepest drilling well by any offshore drilling rig in the world till now.  The company’s chartered-hired ultra-deep water drillship “Dhirubhai Deepwater KG-1 (DDKG-1)” spudded well NA7-1 in exploratory block of KG-DWN in the eastern coast at a water depth of 3165 metre (10,385 feet) on January 23 this year, the company said in a statement .

“On an average the depth is around 3,000-5,000 feet, but this is a unique achievement by 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 in the eastern coast only. The company said in a statement that on February 9, it successfully lowered and latched subsea blow out preventer (BOP) and riser on wellhead to drill further to target a depth of 5625 m.

Meanwhile, for ONGC declining production was one of the major concerns. "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,"  the company chairman and managing director Sudhir Vasudeva said.

While crude oil production saw a 3.02% drop to 6.06 million metric tonne (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% to 6.34 million metric standard cubic meters (MMSCM) compared to 6.40 MMSCM during the previous financial year.