Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation hopes to soon get green clearances for laying onshore installations at the KG basin block. The onshore installations, including pipeline and terminal, are necessary to let the gas flow from the offshore exploration asset.
Though it has made rapid progress in setting up offshore gas extraction facilities, the Gujarat government-controlled outfit is still awaiting environmental and coastal regulatory zone clearances for laying a 10-km underground pipeline on the peripheries of the Coringa Sanctuary (Andhra Pradesh) and commissioning of the onshore terminal.
The commissioning of the $1.8-billion project, with an estimated peak output of 5.7-8.6 million metric standard cubic metre of natural gas every day (mmscmd), has been postponed by three months from June due to delay in getting clearances.
According to sources, with fresh assurance from the relevant authorities to speed up the process of granting environmental clearances, GSPC now hopes to meet its revised target for gas production in October.
According to sources, the company has already readied four wells out of the scheduled 16. Pre-commissioning of one platform is on and another is in advanced stage of completion. Work for sub-sea pipelines has also been completed.
First gas
According to the plan, the GSPC operated consortium (GSPC 80 per cent, Jubilant 10 per cent, GeoGlobal 10 per cent) will initially bring two wells with an estimated production capacity of approximately 1 lakh standard cubic metre into production. The rest will be brought into production in a phased manner.
The journey to peak production capacity will be slow due to the nature of the reservoir.
Though located in shallow water, development of the gas find was extremely challenging due to twin hurdles of very high temperature and pressure of the reservoir. Also, unlike the neighbouring gas asset of Reliance, the reservoir is located deeper under the sea bed.
GSPC struck gas in KG-OSN-2001/3 block — now rechristened as “Deen-Dayal” — in Bay of Bengal, off Andhra Pradesh coastline, in 2005.