New production from KG D6 project to start by mid-2020: RIL-BP

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and British multinational oil and gas company BP Plc have said their joint venture completed the safe cessation of production in a planned manner from the D1 D3 field in block KG D6 off the east coast of India.

The D1 D3 field was India's first deepwater gas field to be put on production in April 2009.

"The RIL-BP joint venture has successfully worked to extend the life of production from the D1 D3 Field which otherwise would have ceased production in 2015 due to issues of reservoir pressure and water ingress," it said in a statement.

Through innovation and application of first-of-their-kind solutions, the field's life was extended for almost five years, to February 2020, maximising the recovery from the field, it added.

The KG D6 block has so far produced an overall 3 trillion cubic feet equivalents (TCFes) resulting in energy import savings of over 30 billion dollars. These fields also established several global benchmarks in terms of operational performance including 99.9 per cent uptime and 100 per cent incident-free operations.

The JV has committed an additional five billion dollars (about Rs 35,000 crore) of investments towards monetising about 3 TCFes (about 500 million barrels of oil equivalent) reserves from three projects -- R cluster, satellite cluster and MJ fields.

These projects will utilise the existing gas production infrastructure. Further, this infrastructure can act as a hub for the development of any discovery from contiguous areas.

The first-gas from these fields is expected in mid-2020. The peak production from these three fields is expected to reach 1 BCFe per day which is about 15 per cent of the then envisaged India's demand.

BP is one of the largest international energy companies in India employing around 7,500 people in the natural gas, lubricants and petrochemicals businesses.

Reliance Industries is India's largest private sector company with a consolidated turnover of Rs 6.22 lakh crore. Its activities span hydrocarbon exploration and production, petroleum refining and marketing, petrochemicals, retail and digital services.

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