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| Edited By: Sreejiraj Eluvangal |Source: DNA |Updated: Mar 30, 2018, 02:48 AM IST
With the first exploration well in Reliance Industries Ltd’s (RIL) D9 block in the Krishna Godavari basin off the Andhra Pradesh coast turning up dry, an independent evaluator has cut down by half the size of the prospective gas resources in the block.
D9, one of the four promising blocks of the company, is likely to hold only around 5.2 trillion cubic feet of gas, compared with the earlier estimate of 10.6 trillion, Reliance’s partner in the field, Hardy Oil & Gas Plc, said.
Five trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas is worth around $25 billion (Rs95,000 crore) when extracted.
In September last year, Reliance (RIL) had announced that it was drilling the first of four exploration wells in the block and followed up the announcement next month saying that the well was unsuccessful.
“The data gathered from the KG-D9-A1 well has led to a reduction of the overall risked resource estimates, primarily in the middle Miocene. The number of prospects remains relatively unchanged due to the addition of several new prospects,” the Isle of Man-based Hardy said in a regulatory filing with the London Stock Exchange.
More details about the resource potential of the block will be known once the company starts drilling again in second half of 2010, according to Hardy’s schedule.
Out of RIL’s four blocks in the KG basin, two — D3 and NEC-25 — have proven resources of around 10 trillion cubic feet each, worth around $100 billion (Rs4.7 lakh crore).
While D6 is already in production, the government has been sitting
on RIL’s proposal for developing the NEC-25 field for around three years. The two blocks are expected to reveal more gas as they are probed further.
D9 was also seen as belonging in the same league, but the report by independent expert Gaffney, Cline & Associates disappointed investors, who beat down the stock by 2.6% in a market that slid 1%.
On a positive note, D3, the other largely unexplored block, got an upgrade in gas reserves from the evaluator. Against 2.47 tcf of prospective resources, the block is now expected to contain around 3.87 tcf of gas, thanks to a recent discovery christened Dhirubhai 44.
“Three consecutive discoveries on the D3 exploration block have
de-risked several play-types and the increase in number of identified prospects has resulted in an upgrade of the block’s risked gas Prospective Resources,” said Isle of Man-based Hardy’s CEO Yogeshwar Sharma.
