RIL to increase KG-D6 gas output

Reliance Industries will add about 1-3 million standard cubic meters per day of gas production at its eastern offshore KG-D6 fields this month as it begins the process of reversing the trend of falling output. 

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

The well, MA-8, is likely to be put on production this month, sources with direct knowledge of the development said. 

MA-8 is projected to produce a minimum of 1 mmscmd and a maximum of 3 mmscmd, they said. 

At 3 mmscmd, MA-8 will be RIL's biggest gas producer well on KG-D6 currently. 

Production at KG-D6 has dropped to just about 12 mmscmd and MA-8 will help reverse the falling trend of last three years. 

The current output is made up of about 8.5 mmscmd from Dhirubhai-1 and 3 (D1&D3) gas field and about 3.3 mmscmd from the MA field in the same block. 

Sources 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 out of the 18 producing wells on 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, has dropped. Of the current gas production from KG-D6, 11.7 mmscmd was sold to urea manufacturing fertiliser plants and the remaining consumed by the pipeline that transports the KG-D6 gas, sources said. 

The company has so far made 18 gas and one oil discovery in the Krishna Godavari basin block in Bay of Bengal. While the lone oil find, MA went on stream in September 2008, D1&D3 were put on production in April 2009.