ONGC to augment oil production at Mehsana by end of fiscal

State-run oil exploration major ONGC's largest onshore oil producing asset in the country at Mehsana has proposed to undertake drilling of 57 development wells to augment oil production capacity to 6,300 tonnes per day by the end of the 2011 fiscal.

The Mehsana Asset currently produces 6,100 tonnes of medium crude, or over 40,000 barrels per day, which is the highest production from any of the onshore assets of the exploration major. The asset has 1,200 flowing oil wells and 23 active gas wells.

"We shall be drilling 57 development wells during this fiscal for increasing our existing per day oil production of 6,100 to over 6,300 tonnes, or 43,100 barrels, by this fiscal end," Mehsana Asset Executive Director A K Gupta told PTI.

Drilling of each well costs anything between Rs 1.5 crore and Rs 2.5 crore, depending upon the well size, he said.

The Mehsana asset, which has close to nine major oil fields, has chalked out a different strategy for layer-wise hydrocarbon exploration at the Santhal field, where per day production is 1,250 tonnes.

"Through prudent usage of sub-surface reservoir management technology, we intend to raise the oil production from wells at Santhal from 1,250 to 1,350 tonnes per day by this fiscal end, which is part of the asset oil augmentation plan," Gupta said.

"The asset will also be revamping 12 oil and gas installations out of the 33 here with an investment of a few crores in order to make them sustainable for the next two decades," Gupta said.

The technical feasibility study for modernisation of the installations has commenced, Gupta said, adding, "The modernisation includes addition of new equipment".

"As part of the multi-crore modernisation project, we have also proposed to set up an exclusive desalter plant having 6,000 to 10,000 tonnes per day oil filtering capacity," he said.

The technical feasibility of this plant is presently being examined, Gupta said.

The proposed modernisation at the asset is part of the national onshore installation revamping project of ONGC.

"Mehsana asset's total oil production in 2009-2010 stood at 2.204 million tonnes, which was up by 103 per cent from the allocated target of 2.13 MMT of the same period," a spokesperson for the asset said.