RIL to supply crude to CPCL by early Feb

Reliance Industries (RIL) will supply the second consignment of crude oil from its eastern offshore Krishna Godavari basin D6 block to Chennai Petroleum Corporation (CPCL) in January-end or early February instead of this month.

Reliance had contracted to deliver 450,000 barrels of oil from MA-1 field in the predominantly gas-rich block in the Bay of Bengal to CPCL on December 23-24.

However, there was an equipment failure at the field last week forcing an emergency shutdown of the facilities, sources said.

After the shutdown, RIL offered to sell 300,000 to 320,000 bpd of oil to CPCL and informed the company that if it wanted the full contracted quantity it would have to wait till February for producing the remainder quantity after the field restarts production.

CPCL opted to wait, they said.

The field, which started crude oil production in September, last week suffered an equipment failure leading to closure of the facility for 3-4 weeks.

Sources said crude oil from the MA-1 field is stored on a floating, production, storage and off-loading vessel (FPSO) at the well-head and once critical volumes are reached it is transferred to a ship for transportation to a refinery.

On December 9, a rupture in a short pipe spool connected to the flare header in the FPSO led to the emergency shutdown of the production system.