ONGC to drill 9 development wells in K-G Basin

Oil and Natural Gas Corp Ltd is planning to undertake drilling of nine development wells in the Krishna-Godavari OSN-2004/1 and GS-49-2 fields beside creation of other infrastructure in the KG Basin off India's eastern coast with an investment of Rs3,750 crore.

According to the minutes of a meeting of Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) of the Ministry of Environment and Forests and Climate Change held recently, the public sector undertaking sought the ministry's go-ahead to prepare Terms of Reference for the project.

"The cost of the project is Rs3,750 crore. Drilling will be done for 45-60 days for each well. It is reported that no national parks, Reserve Forests (RF)/ Protected Forests (PF), Biosphere Reserves, Tiger/Elephant Reserves, etc lies within 10 km distance.

However, during presentation PP (project proponent)  ONCG informed that pipeline is passing through forest land and stage-1 forest clearance for this area has been obtained for S-1 Vashishta," the EAC said.

The project involves the integrated development of block KG-OSN-2004/1 and GS-49-2 field in KG Offshore and involves constructing new onshore facilities, drilling and completion of seven new wells in KG-OSN-2004/1 and 2 new wells in GS- 49-2 prospect, subsea pipeline from offshore to new onshore terminal with a carrying capacity of 6.4 MMSCMD of gas while the new onshore facility is to be constructed for 8 MMSCMD of gas, it said.

Similarly, the PSU sought permission from MoEF to drill as many as 15 exploratory wells in NELP-I offshore Block KG-DWN-98/2 in KG-Basin.

The offshore block KG-DWN-98/2 with an area of 7294.6 sq km was initially awarded to Cairn Energy India with 100 per cent in the first round of NELP bidding in April 2000.

Subsequently, south-eastern part of the block with an area of 2462 sq kms was relinquished in 2004. In March 2005, ONGC acquired 90 percent stake and operatorship and subsequently acquired total 100 percent stake of the block.