ONGC begins drilling gas from on land block at Nagayalanka

ONGC today formally began drilling gas from its on land block at Nagayalanka in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh.

Chairman and Managing director of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Shashi Shankar, who launched the operation at a function, said the Nagayalanka region has oil and gas reserves of 450 million barrels and 15 mmscmd (million metric standard cubic metre per day) respectively.

Of this, only 40 million barrels and 45,000 mmscmd were permitted to be tapped, he added.

The gas would be transported to S Yanam in East Godavari district and sold to Mega Engineering, RAK Ceramics and Sentini Sanitaryware, he said.

Three wells would be drilled at a cost of Rs 420 crore by March 2019, he added.

The Nagayalanka field has been awarded under the new exploration licensing policy-2005 to ONGC-Cairn Energy India Ltd.

In the exploration stage, Cairn operated the block and dug three wells. But two of them went dry and only one yielded gas and oil.

Over the years, no activity could be taken up as permission was not granted.

The union environment ministry gave its nod for drilling in February this year while the ministry of petroleum and gas gave permission for commercial operations last month.

Accordingly, ONGC launched its operations this afternoon.