The Hindu : Business : Reliance plans for gas production from KG basin

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 03, 2004

Business

Business

Reliance plans for gas production from KG basin

By Shakeel M. Rasheed

KAKINADA, NOV. 2. Reliance Industries Limited is putting in place plans for its first ever commercial exploitation of natural gas which it terms as the largest gas reserves discovered in India in 30 years in the Krishna-Godavari basin.

The company sources disclosed to The Hindu that international experts were whetting the plans and "we have targeted to bring gas to shore by 2007".

The RIL Chairman, Mukesh Ambani, first broke the news of the gas discovery in October, 2002 which came within 20 months of the award of licence under the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP). This marked the first ever gas discovery by an Indian private sector company.

In all, Reliance holds interest in 32-exploration acreage exceeding 230,000 sq. kms. in India in consortium with other exploration and production (E & P) companies, the blocks spanning a range of geological settings across on land, shallow and deep waters on the east and west coast of India.

According to the sources, continuous off-shore drilling was stopped in the eight wells taken up in the first phase and Reliance had shifted the focus to six wells in the second stage of the operations taken up in December, 2003, besides launching exploration in other blocks under the NELP in the KG basin.

Gas from the KG basin would first flow from the `KG-DWN-98/3' block or Dhirubai 6 (D6) as Reliance has sought to call it in memory of its founder and it is expected to yield 40 million standard cubic metres of gas per day.

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