RIL ramps up gas output from KG-D6

Reversing the declining trend, Reliance Industries has ramped up gas production at KG-D6 fields by about 15 per cent as it added the first production well on the eastern offshore fields in almost four years.

RIL on January 2 began production from the MA-8 well to ramp up output from the KG-D6 block to about 13.7 million standard cubic meters per day, officials said on Thursday.

RIL and its partners BP Plc of UK and Canada's Niko Resources had last month spud the seventh well on the MA oil and gas field in the KG-DWN-98/3 or KG-D6 block in the Krishna Godavari basin.

The well, MA-8, was put into production on January 2 and is currently under the process of stabilisation, the officials said.

MA-8 is currently producing less than 1.5 mmscmd and is projected to go up to 2.5 mmscmd.

Production at KG-D6 had last month dropped to just about 11.7 mmscmd and MA-8 has helped reverse the falling trend of the past three years.

The current output of 13.7 mmscmd is made up of about 8.7 mmscmd from Dhirubhai 1 and 3 gas field and about 5

mmscmd from the MA field in the same block.

Officials said RIL is also repairing a third of the wells shut at its main D1&D3 gas field to boost output by March.

RIL had to shut 10 of the 18 producing wells at D1&D3 due to sand and water flooding.

It had also shut two of the six wells at the MA field due to high water and sand ingress. MA-8 will be the seventh well on the field.

The KG-D6 fields, which began gas production in April 2009, hit a peak output of 69.43 mmscmd in March 2010 before water and sand ingress shut down well after well.

D1&D3, the largest of the 18 gas discoveries in the KG-D6 block, produced 66.35 mmscmd, while 3.07 mmscmd was the output from the MA field, the only oil discovery on the block.

Besides the fall in output from D1&D3, gas production from the MA field, which had hit a peak of 6.78 mmscmd in January 2012, has dropped.

The company has so far made 18 gas and one oil discovery in the Krishna Godavari basin block in the Bay of Bengal.

While the lone oil find, MA went on stream in September 2008, D1 & D3 were put into production in April 2009.