Reliance Industries has already stepped up gas production from 28 mmscmd in June to about 36-37 mmscmd now. The production will soon reach 42 mmscmd once the supply to the Dabhol power plant is increased in the first week of October, said a company official.
Reliance Industries' eastern offshore KG-D6 gas fields are likely to see output drop to all-time low of 20 million standard cubic meters per day in 2014-15, Oil Minister S Jaipal Reddy said on Tuesday.
A company official said work stopped temporarily only at two rigs and the remaining 34 in the offshore were operational. He added there was no impact on the company's production.
Reliance Industries has said the natural gas output at its Krishna Godavari basin KG-D6 fields averaged 54.5 million cubic meters a day in the quarter ended December 31, 2010, down from 60 mmscmd achieved in April.
Reliance Industries would repair a third of the wells shut at its main gas field in the eastern offshore KG-D6 block to boost output in the first quarter of 2014.
In its annual work program submitted to upstream oil regulator Directorate General of Hydrocarbons, Reliance stated that natural gas output from Dhirubhai-1 and 3 or D1 and D3 gas fields in the block KG-DWN-98/3 or KG-D6, will be about 38 mmscmd in 2012-13 from current production level of 43-44 mmscmd.
CNG prices in Mumbai may have to be hiked by about Rs 16 per kg and piped cooking gas by Rs 10 after government decided to divert some of its cheaper domestic gas to Gujarat.
RIL's gas production from its D6 fields in the Krishna Godavari basin on Sunday touched 50.15 mmscmd. This for the first time surpasses ONGC's 49.6 mmscmd output.
IOC is building a 5 million tonnes per annum LNG terminal at Ennore near Chennai which is to be completed by 2017.
On February 24, when Vladimir Putin announced a military operation on Ukraine, few would have thought that Indian government-owned GAIL India would feel the impact. The tensions over gas supplies were essentially a Europe-Russia problem, related to the sanctions western economies imposed on Moscow. But the EU depends on Russian imports for 40 per cent of its gas stocks, an over-dependence that Russia has underlined with Kremlin-owned Gazprom cutting its supplies through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to 20 per cent, citing maintenance issues.
RIL had sought 11.80 million standard cubic meters per day of KG D-6 gas to meet feedstock requirement at its twin refineries but it got only 2.34 mmscmd.
The output was behind target in 2015-16 as well and the government is yet to issue a cost disallowance notice for that
MahaVitaran, which draws 95 per cent of the power from the project, has started drawing power at Rs 4 per unit.
The company is pursuing the early scheduling of gas with the Centre to restart generation.
An empowered group of ministers headed by Defence Minister A K Antony is to consider an Oil Ministry proposal of abolishing the priority ranking according to which natural gas is first given to urea manufacturing fertiliser plants, then to LPG units, followed by power plants, city gas, steel and refineries.
With this, the total penalty on RIL for missing the target in four fiscal years beginning April 1, 2010 now stands at a cumulative $2.376 billion, the Minister informed the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.
Gas production from KG-D6 in the week ended November 4 dropped to 25.11 mmscmd from about 26 mmscmd last month, according to an output status report filed by the company with the Oil Ministry in New Delhi.
The oil ministry has stopped making fresh allocation of natural gas from domestic fields to the city gas sector, threatening the viability of Rs 2 lakh crore investment planned in the sector besides leading to a hike in CNG and piped cooking gas prices to record levels, sources said. Despite a decision of the Union Cabinet to give 100 per cent gas supply under 'no cut' priority to the city gas distribution (CGD) sector, current supplies have been maintained at March 2021 demand level. Besides, the process of allocating gas on a six-monthly average drawl also is punishing the CGD entities driving growth.
Post-cessation, activities related to the safe shutdown of the field are underway.
Global energy supermajor BP plc on Thursday said it is about to open its first 'Jio-bp' branded petrol pump in partnership with Reliance Industries near Mumbai.
BP, which bought a 30 per cent stake in RIL's 21 oil and gas blocks, including KG-D6, for $7.026 billion in 2011, is working with RIL to arrest the output decline in the fields.
Non-core sponge iron plants, petrochemicals units and oil refineries have cornered as much as 13.13 million cubic metres per day out of the 60.76 mmscmd of KG-D6 gas allocated.
Reliance has seen natural gas output fall to 50-52 mmscmd during recent times from over 60 mmscmd achieved in mid-2010 due to reservoir complexities.
Reliance Industries, which has seen output from its prolific KG-D6 fields fall by 15 per cent, can raise production to 67-68 million cubic metres of gas a day by next month if it can drill additional wells.
Amidst Finance Ministry raising prospects of forcing Reliance Industries to sell gas at old price of $4.2, Oil Minister M Veerapa Moily on Thursday said there was no rethinking in the government on the decision to double gas rates from April 1, 2014.
State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp on Thursday said its natural gas output will rise by over 58 per cent to 100 million cubic metres a day by 2015-16 after it puts its eastern offshore fields into production.
The government is giving top priority to making available 581 MMSCMD of gas required by power projects in the country, Rajya Sabha was informed on Tuesday.
Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had last month told the Parliament that his Ministry has disallowed RIL from recovering $2.376 billion invested to develop offshore Krishna Godavari gas fields as output has fallen drastically and was way below the promised volumes in past four years.
RIL said production capacity from KG-D6 has far exceeded the 40 million standard cubic meters per day (mmscmd), for which buyers have been tied-up, and has asked the government to immediately name customers for an additional 25 mmscmd so as to avoid irreversible damage to the field reservoirs.
Energy supermajor Exxon Mobil Corp is in talks to buy a stake in producing oil and gas fields in India, Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Wednesday showcasing efforts to raise domestic output to cut imports. Exxon Mobil had in October last year signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) to offer its expertise and technology for developing resources in offshore blocks.
Reliance Industries and its partner BP Plc on Thursday won approval to invest $3.18 billion in R-Series gas field in the flagging KG-D6 block.
RIL is currently producing 36 mmscmd gas from KG-D6, half of which goes to power plants. The firm has the capacity to produce 60 mmscmd but is constrained to produce less as the government is yet to identify customers for buying gas beyond the initial 40 mmscmd, allocated primarily to fertiliser and power producers in accordance with the Gas Utilisation Policy.
Pakistan's pipeline density, at present is 1044 km/mmscmd (million metric standard cubic meter per day) per day compared to 116 km/mmscmd of India, Assocham said in its paper on gas sector 'A Comparison between India and Pakistan'. The neighbouring country has created a 31,000 km distribution network to serve its domestic and commercial consumers in large locations, against the 11,000 km network that have so far been built in India to serve the needs of its consumers.
Oil and Natural Gas Corp, which had last year firmed up an investment of Rs 34,012 crore (USD 5.076.37 billion) in bringing to production 10 oil and gas discoveries in its Bay of Bengal block KG-DWN-98/2 (KG-D5), plans to invest another Rs 21,528.10 crore (USD 3.2 billion) in developing the ultra-deepsea UD-1 find.
Reliance Industries Ltd will invest $8.84 billion in producing 80 million standard cubic meters per day (mmscmd) of gas from its KG-D6 block in Krishna Godavari basin.
The consortium of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, BG and Reliance will raise the output from Panna-Mukta-Tapti fields in western offshore of the country by 30 per cent at an investment of Rs 2,192 crore or Rs 21.92 billion ($520 million).
\nRIL had earlier proposed investment of $2.47 billion to produce 40 mmscmd for 7.5 years from discoveries -- Dhirubhai 1 and 3 (in the D6 block) -- out of a total 34 wells.
RIL-BP, who are currently producing about 11.8 million standard cubic metres per day of gas from the flagging eastern offshore KG-D6 block, is targeting newer fields in KG-D6 block and gas discoveries in neighbouring north-east coast and Cauvery basin to raise output.
RIL-BP currently produce gas from Dhirubhai-1 and 3 field and oil and gas from MA field, three of the over one-and-half dozen discoveries made in KG-D6 block