While details of the D6 blocks in the Krishna-Godavari basin is in public domain, Reliance’s potential assets in the D4 block may just tower over D6.
MUMBAI: The oil and gas assets that are yet to be tabulated by Reliance Industries and its minority partner Niko Resources might have just got more humungous.
While details of the D6 blocks situated in the Krishna Godavari basin in Bay of Bengal, just off the Andhra Pradesh coast, is in the public domain, Reliance’s potential assets in the D4 block in the Mahanadi basin off the Orissa coast may just tower over D6.
Niko Resources, the Canada-based minority partner of RIL, revealed this in a presentation made at the Energy Conference in Canada.
Niko said the D4 block acreage is two-and-a-half times D6 at 17,050 sq km, while D6 assets are spread across 7,645 km.
Edward Sampson, president and CEO of the Calgary-based Niko said two-dimensional seismic data show that the D4 block contains five deepwater channel complexes compared with just one in D6.
The encouraging result of the 2D seismic has resulted in RIL extending the 3D seismic to an area of 4,000 sq km from the earlier planned 1800 sq km, Niko said.
Deepwater channels massive sand-formation reservoirs that indicate the presence of oil and gas.
Sampson said Mahanadi assets hold far more gas and oil than D6 could possibly have.
“We like… D6, but we still consider our D4 prospect to be the best thing Niko possibly could have. It will either be worth nothing to the company or we will be talking about just this for the rest of the time,” Sampson said, clearly hedging his forward-looking statement.
RIL and Niko are moving fast to meet a mid-2008 target of monetising the 1.9 million acre D6 block. Reliance owns 90% of D6 and 85% of D4, while Niko owns the rest.
The presentation by Sampson is now hosted on the Niko Resources website.
Niko is gung-ho about the potential of D4, but it continues to acknowledge the potential of D6.
“To date we (Niko & RIL) have been drilling the channels, we are just at the headwaters right now of the large turbidite ponds; stepping out, we see the best is yet to come in D6,”
“We should be recovering oil in the neighbourhood of 100% from D6,” Sampson said.
Reliance Industries officials refused to comment.
RIL is bound by norms set by the Director General of Hydro-Carbons, which specifies that all oil and gas discoveries will first have to be informed to the authorities and vetted by it before it goes to the public domain.
What’s significant about the D4 assets is its sheer size and potential, said Macquarie Research analysts Jal Irani and Amit Mishra in a report on Monday.
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