ONGC to use GSPC's under-sea infrastructure for KG find

The company had last year inked a pct to use RIL's under-utilised KG-D6 infrastructure to move gas from neighbouring KG-DWN-98/2, or KG-D5 block, to land

State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) plans to use Gujarat firm GSPC's undersea infrastructure to bring gas from its KG-basin fields in Bay of Bengal to land.

ONGC had last year signed an agreement to use Reliance Industries' under-utilised KG-D6 infrastructure to move gas from neighbouring KG-DWN-98/2, or KG-D5 block, to land.

The company has now submitted plans to the government to use infrastructure of Gujarat State Petroleum Corp, which has laid out under-sea pipelines and other systems to take gas from its block in the vicinity of Andhra Pradesh, sources said.

ONGC has made 11 discoveries in KG-D5 which it plans to develop in three clusters or groups. In the first cluster, it plans to club gas finds D and E in the northern part of KG-D5 with a discovery in its adjoining G-4 block.

These finds, sources said, are in close proximity to the pipeline system that are to take gas from GSPC's KG-OSN-2001/3 block to onland.

So, ONGC will pump 14.5 million standard cubic meters per day of peak output envisaged from Cluster-1 to the GSPC network for onward transmission to land.

Cluster-2, which is also in the northern part of KG-D5, will have two components - 91,000 barrels per day of oil which will be transported to a floating processing system from where it will be sent to refineries by tankers. About 12.5 mmscmd of gas will be transported to an onshore terminal at Odalarevu through a separate ONGC-laid sub-sea pipeline network.

The third Cluster is made up of UD-1 gas discovery in the Southern part, which lies in extremely challenging water depths of 2400-3200 meters.

Sources said ONGC is currently not pursuing development of this as it is yet to get a suitable technological solution. The company is targeting mid-2018 for start of natural gas production from the block and mid 2019 for oil.

The block KG-D5, which sits next to RIL's KG-D6 block, is divided into the Northern Discovery Area (NDA) and Southern Discovery Area (SDA). NDA has 121 million tons of inplace oil reserves and 78 billion cubic meters of gas while SDA has an inplace reserve of 80.9 bcm.

ONGC and RIL won KG-D5 and KG-D6 block in the first round of auction under New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) in 2000.

RIL began production from the oil discovery in KG-D6 in September 2008 and put gas find on production in April 2009. It created capacities to carry as much as 80 mmscmd of gas but current output of less than 12 mmscmd utilises only 15% of this resource.