Reliance shuts down D1/D3 gas field in its KG-D6 block

D1/D3 gas field, the country’s first deepwater gas field, ceased to produce on Monday after a $1-billion investment and mammoth technological intervention by Reliance Industries and its partner BP Plc of UK extended the life of dwindling fields by four years, sources said.

The D1/D3 field was put on production in April 2009. Output, which peaked at over 61 million standard cubic meters per day in 2010, had been on a decline as sand and water ingress forced wells to shut down one after the other. While at the peak, it was India’s biggest gas field, in the last quarter D1/D3 produced an average of just 1.5 mmscmd.

The sources said only three out of the 18 wells drilled on the fields had remained on production and they too died on Monday.

In perhaps one of its kind intervention in a deepsea field, Reliance-BP, through use of a combination of complex techniques, kept the wells flowing at Dhirubhai-1 and 3 (D1&D3) fields for the last four years.

Reliance had to date made 19 oil and gas discoveries in the Krishna Godavari basin. Of these, D26 or MA — the only oil discovery in the block — was the first field to began production in September 2008. D1 and D3 fields went on-stream in April 2009.

KG-D6 produced about 3 trillion cubic feet equivalent, saving about $30 billion in energy imports. The sources said the field infrastructure would be utilised to bring on stream the next set of fields in the block.

The joint venture has committed $5 billion (₹35,000 crore) of investments towards monetizing another 3 trillion cubic feet equivalent (about 500 million barrels of oil equivalent) reserves from three projects — R cluster, Satellite Cluster and MJ fields.

These projects will be utilizing most of the existing gas production facilities, they said, adding once commissioned, the three fields will deliver a peak production of 1 billion cubic feet per day which is about 20 per cent of the current domestic production.

The sources said despite best efforts, in recent times the field instability exacerbated due to water and sand ingress leading to a sharp decline in production. Consequently, to preserve the facilities for future use, the field had to be safely shutdown on Monday.