ONGC to produce oil from K-G block soon

New Delhi: Oil and Natural Gas Corporation's (ONGC) delayed Krishna Godavari basin KG-D5 project is likely to start crude oil production in May this year and gas output a year later, a senior company official said. ONGC was originally to start gas production from Cluster-II fields in block KG-DWN-98/2 (KG-D5) in June 2019 and the first oil was to flow in March 2020. The company blamed contracting and supply chains issues due to the pandemic for shifting the start of oil production first to November 2021, then to third quarter of 2022 and now to May 2023. Gas output start target was first revised to May 2021, then to May 2023 and now to May 2024. ONGC Director (production) Pankaj Kumar said a floating production unit, called FPSO, which will be used to produce oil, is already in Indian waters. "We estimate oil production should start in May," he said.

The block is currently producing 1.7 million standard cubic meters per day of natural gas. "We will start with 10,000 to 12,000 barrels per day and reach the peak of 45,000 bpd in 2-3 months," he said adding some 2 mmscmd of gas would also flow with oil but actual gas output will start in May 2024 when 7-8 mmscmd production is expected. The production estimates are however much lower than what was originally projected. At the time of its launch in April 2018, ONGC had said the estimated capital expenditure would be $5.07 billion and operational expenditure would be $5.12 billion over a field life of 16 years.

Kumar said the company hopes to arrest the decline in crude oil production in the next fiscal while natural gas output is likely to see a rise. ONGC's KG-DWN-98/2 or KG-D5 block, which sits next to Reliance Industries' KG-D6 block in the KG basin, has a number of discoveries that have been clubbed into clusters.