US$20bn gas development

India will see an investment of US$20 billion in deep water gas field development in the next 5-7 years while boosting green fuel usage, Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan said.

The investment will be on in developing natural gas discoveries by state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) NGC and private sector leader Reliance Industries-BP joint venture (RIL-BP).

The fields are in the Krishna Godavari (KG) basin off the east coast.

“We are now expediting production of gas from domestic sources to the extent of 20 trillion cubic feet from already discovered sources through policy, fiscal and regulatory mechanism,” Pradhan said at a forum organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry on Dec 7, 2016.

These fields and the current auctions of Discovered Small Fields are are expected to be in production in the next 3-4 years.

ONGC plans to invest US$5.07 billion to produce over 16 million standard cubic metres per day of natural gas from a set of discoveries in its Krishna Godavari basin KG-DWN-98/2 block.

RIL-BP has several discoveries in the adjacent KG-DWN- 98/3 or KG-D6 block and NEC-25 off the Odisha coast.

“About $20 billion will be invested in next 5-7 years primarily in deepwater fields to augment gas production,” he said.

Natural accounts for 6 per cent of the primary energy basket in India compared with global average of more than 24 per cent.

“We are determined to increase the gas offtake significantly as it would serve several objectives. By switching to this cleaner fuel and diversifying our energy mix, we can augment our fight towards climate justice,” he said. fii-news.com