Oil companies Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and BP announced on Tuesday they will jointly develop the deepwater MJ project offshore the east coast of India.
MJ (also known as D55) is the third of three new gas projects in the Block KG D6 integrated development plan, and its approval follows sanctions for the development of ‘R-Series’ deepwater gas field in June 2017 and for the Satellites cluster in April 2018.
Together the three projects are expected to develop a total of about 3 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of discovered gas resources with a total investment of circa INR 35,000 crore ($5 billion). These projects together, when fully developed, will bring about 1 billion cubic feet a day of new domestic gas onstream, phased over 2020-2022.
Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of RIL, said, “Bringing these three discoveries to production, as promised in 2017, by leveraging the existing infrastructure has been the primary objective of the Reliance - BP Joint Venture. The gas will satiate the increasing demand for clean fuel in the country, save foreign exchange and reduce dependency on imported gas. We are excited about bringing this gas from our third project on the East Coast of India onshore to power the Indian economy with an environment-friendly fuel and help strengthen energy security while moving towards meeting India's Climate Change Goal.”
Bob Dudley, BP Group Chief Executive, said, “We are building an important upstream business in India, helping to supply the country’s growing gas market. Working closely with Reliance, we are efficiently developing discovered resources, with focused exploration to give options for the future. This latest investment is a further demonstration of BP’s commitment to India and helps support India in addressing the dual challenge and moving to a low carbon future.”
MJ is a gas condensate field. The project is in 700-1100 meters water depth, with a well depth of 4,200 meters below mean sea-level in a high-temperature and pressure environment. It comprises of wells connected to a subsea production, with tieback to a floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel to process and separate liquids, and gas which will be exported to the onshore terminal through one of the existing 24 inch trunk pipelines. The project is expected to begin production in mid-2022.
BP in 2011 took a 30% stake in multiple oil and gas blocks in India operated by RIL, including the producing Block KG D6. Since forming this partnership, the two companies have invested more than INR13000 crore ($2 billion) in deepwater exploration and production to date.
The first of the three KG D6 projects under development, the R-Series project, is in execution phase. All six wells have been drilled. With this, the first installation campaign; in which a 54-line km, 18”/4” piggyback flow line was installed in 1,920 meters water depth – setting a new world record for deepwater pipelay installation, has been successfully completed. First gas from this project is on-schedule and expected by mid-2020, the partners say.
Meanwhile, the second project, the development of the Satellites cluster, is on track with all major contracts awarded to deliver first gas by mid-2021.
In addition to the D55 gas discovery announced in 2013, the partnership has sustained production from the geologically complex reservoirs in D1D3 on Block KG D6.