India's Reliance Industries has slashed its recoverable natural gas reserve estimates in its main production fields by 70 percent, due to "unforeseen geological surprises", a minister said on Thursday.
Declining gas production at the D6 block in the Krishna Godavari basin, India's richest gas find, has already reduced the country's overall gas production, obliging it to import costlier liquefied natural gas.
Reliance, controlled by India's wealthiest man Mukesh Ambani, has cut estimated recoverable gas reserves from two gas fields in the KG-D6 basin off eastern India to 3.10 trillion cubic feet (tcf), junior oil minister R.P.N. Singh told the lower house of parliament.
The earlier estimate was 10.3 tcf, Singh said.
"The operator (Reliance) has attributed lower gas production (compared with an amended initial development plan) from the D1 and D3 fields to unforeseen geological surprises and reservoir," the minister said, without elaborating.
A Reliance company spokesman declined to comment, but said they had stated "a similar position" in their last annual report.
D1 and D3 are the largest of the 18 finds Reliance made in the deep-sea oil and gas blocks in the Bay of Bengal, which had started production in April 2009.
India's oil regulator and analysts have been concerned in recent months about falling oil and gas output from Reliance's main fields, which has seen its stock underperform.
Reliance currently produces 29 million standard cubic meters a day (mscmd) of natural gas from its fields, down by a half from its peak of 60 mscmd touched in 2010.
The energy giant had earlier said output has fallen due to "reservoir complexity and natural decline".
Last year, British energy giant BP paid $7.2 billion to acquire a 30 percent stake in 21 of Reliance's oil and gas fields.
Reliance hopes that BP's deep-water drilling expertise will give the Indian giant the skills to develop hard-to-exploit reserves and find more oil.
No comments:
Post a Comment