Centre orders Reliance Industries to drill 11 more wells

The upstream regulator has asked Reliance Industries (RIL), the operator of the offshore KG-D6 field, to drill 11 more wells during the current financial year to reverse the decline in production of natural gas from the field.

“We have suggested to RIL to drill 11 more wells during this financial year. They will come up with proposal to drill new wells in two weeks’ time,” S K Srivastava, director general of hydrocarbons (DGH), said after a three-hour-long meeting with the KG basin management committee.

RIL has dug 20 wells till now, of which two have not been connected with the main production line. The company had to drill 22 wells by April 1.

The 11 wells include nine for the current fiscal and two that spilled over from the last fiscal, Srivastava said.

There has been a decline of 2 million metric standard cubic metres per day (mmscmd) of gas from the field.  Latest DGH figures show the operator is producing only 48 mmscmd of natural gas from the field now, down from 50 mmscmd in the last week of April. RIL, India’s largest natural gas producer, was previously expected to ramp up gas output from the block to a peak of 80 mmscmd by March 2010.

The company has blamed technical problems for its failure to drill the required numbers of wells in the KG Basin. Production of natural gas from the D6 block started in April 2009.