ONGC starts pumping gas from KG block

New Delhi: State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) has begun gas production from its most promising block in the Krishna Godavari basin in the Bay of Bengal and is planning a ramp up production in coming weeks, officials said.

ONGC's KG-DWN-98/2 or KG-D5 block, which sits next to Reliance Industries' flagging KG-D6 area, holds key to the company's output profile that is constrained by aging fields.

Officials said the company began production from the first well on the KG-D5 block and is currently producing around 0.25 million standard cubic meters per day.

It is doing a build-up mapping and the production is likely to rise to 0.75 mmscmd within next few weeks.

ONGC is investing USD 5.07 billion in developing the oil and gas discoveries in the block. The project will cumulatively produce around 25 million tonne of oil and 45 billion cubic meters of gas with peak production of 78,000 barrels per day of oil and 15 million standard cubic meters per day.

After successfully commissioning its first deepwater project S1 Vasishta in eastern offshore in March 2018 (which would be yielding about 4.3 mmscmd of gas), ONGC is now concentrating on the flagship project from NELP block KG-DWN-98/2 in the deepwater of eastern offshore.

Thirty-four wells are to be drilled under this project. Of these 34 wells, 15 are oil-producing, 8 are gas producing and 11 are water injecting wells.

The discoveries in the block are divided into three clusters- Cluster-1, 2 and 3. Cluster 2 is being put to production first.

The Cluster 2 field is divided into two blocks namely 2A and 2B, which are expected to produce 23.52 million

metric tonnes of oil and 50.70 billion cubic meters

(bcm) of gas.