India’s Reliance Industries Limited(RIL) and its partner British energy firm BP are planning to commence production from the MJ field in the eastern KG-D6 offshore block in India in the last quarter of 2022. The KG-D6 block, which is located in the Krishna-Godavari basin of the Bay of Bengal on the eastern coast of India, is 66.6% owned by Reliance Industries and 33.3% by firm BP. The MJ field, which is a part of KG-D6 offshore block, will have an annual average production capacity of 90 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (BOED). MJ is a gas condensate field and is the third field under development as part of the KG D6 integrated development campaign.

The partners have completed the first offshore installation campaign at the field and plan to start the second offshore installation campaign in November 2021.In its investor presentation, RIL said: “Drilling and completions of wells (are) underway.First gas expected by 3Q FY23.”

The three fields in the KG-D6 block are expected to jointly produce around 30 million standard cubic meters per day of natural gas. This would meet up to 15% of the estimated gas demand in the country.

According to estimates, the gas reserves accumulated in the three discoveries at the KG-D6 block is approximately eight trillion cubic feet. The project is in 700-1100 meters water depth, with a well depth of 4200 meters below mean sea-level in a high-temperature and pressure environment. The MJ field is planned to be developed with seven subsea wells that will be tied back to a new 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. It comprises of wells connected to a subsea production, with tie-back to a Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO). The project is expected to begin production in mid-2022.

Reliance Industries started production from the Satellite Cluster gas field in April 2021, followed by R Cluster field commissioning in December 2020. While R-Cluster is expected to reach plateau gas production of about 12.9 million metric standard cubic meter per day (mmscmd) in 2021, Satellite Cluster will have a peak output of 6 mmscmd. The MJ field will have a peak output of 12 mmscmd.

Oil-to-telecom conglomerate RIL has so far made 19 gas discoveries in the KG-D6 block. Of these, D-1 and D-3 the largest among the lot were brought into production from April 2009 and MA, the only oilfield in the block, was put to production in September 2008.While the MA field stopped producing in 2019, the output from D-1 and D-3 ceased in February 2020. Other discoveries have either been surrendered or taken away by the government for not meeting timelines for beginning production.

Reliance said “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 (US$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”.