It’s curtains for India’s first deepwater gas field
NEW DELHI: Reliance Industries Ltd and BP on Monday shut down the D1 D3 field in the KG-D6 block off the Andhra coast which finally ran out of gas, bringing down curtains on India’s remarkable deepwater debut that was dogged by controversy right from the word go.
The joint venture is expected to re-enter the gas market by bringing to production three projects worth $5 billion in the same block – R cluster, Satellite cluster and MJ fields – by the middle of this year. The three projects have reserves of 3 tcf (trillion cubic feet) of gas, equivalent to 500 million barrels of oil.
The D1 D3 field were put into production in April 2009 but soon saw output dip drastically due to drop in reservoir pressure and water ingress. The shortfall in production left some 24,000 MW power plants planned or built stranded. This prompted allegations of goldplating and led to the federal auditor’s report – first reported by TOI in June 2011 – saying the government favoured 3 explorers, including RIL for the KG-D6 project. That report prompted several policy changes to bring in transparency.
