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ONGC to charter foreign rigs

By Our Staff Reporter

VISAKHAPATNAM SEPT. 13. The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) will hire two foreign rigs to undertake deep-water oil and natural gas drilling operations in the East Coast and the West Coast from December.

Disclosing this to reporters after inaugurating the first well control conference, organised by the Crisis Management Team of ONGC here on Saturday, the company's Director (technical and field services), N. Lal, said that they would spend Rs. 4 crores a day on chartering rigs from Trans Ocean Sedco Forest of the United States and Dolphin of Norway.

The contracts have been awarded to the two foreign companies to undertake drilling operations in the West Coast in December, 2003, and in the East Coast particularly in the Krishna-Godavari (K-G) basin in February next year. While the American rig can drill up to 1800 metres depth, the Norwegian rig can extract oil and gas upto a depth of 3,000 metres.

Mr. Lal said that they would invite global tenders for finalising the contract to lay a 30-km-long pipeline between the G-1 and GS-15 oil wells in the K-G basin to extract an estimated two million cubic metres of gas and 3,000-4,000 barrels of oil a day.

Earlier, in his inaugural address, he underlined the need for adopting effective blow-out management strategies and expressed satisfaction over non-occurrence of any blow-out in Rajahmundry area since 1997.

The Oil Industry Safety Board Executive Director, P.V.A. Iyer,

the ONGC Asset Manager (Rajahmundry area operations), C. Lal,

the company's Executive Director and Chief of Drilling Services, U.N. Bose, the ED and Chief Well Services, A.K. Hazarika, and others spoke.

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