India: Oil minister spuds offshore well in Bay of Bengal

India’s oil and gas minister Dharmendra Pradhan formally spudded an exploration well at ONGC’s east coast project of KG-DWN-98/2.

The minister spudded the offshore well from the drillship Platinum Explorer 35 kilometers off the Andhra Pradesh coast in the Bay of Bengal, India.

“The well #KDG-A is one of the 34 wells planned under this mega project. The deepwater well has a target depth of 2346 meters, in a water depth of 518 meters. The well is expected to produce around 5000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) when put to production,” ONGC said in a statement this week.

According to ONGC, the project would cumulatively produce around 25 MMT of oil and 45 BCM of gas with peak production of 78000 barrels per day of oil and 15 MMSCMD of gas. ONGC expects to bring first gas from this project to market by 2019 end and oil by 2020.

The KG DWN 98/2 project entails drilling and completion of 34 subsea wells, laying about 425 kilometers of pipeline and 150 kilometers of control umbilicals in water depths varying from 300 to 1400 meters.

The development will include an offshore platform which will process gas and send it onshore. ONGC also plans to deploy a Floating Production, Storage and Offloading Vessel ( FPSO) in water depth of 413 meters to process the oil and gas.

The project envisages an CAPEX of $5.07 billion and OPEX of 5.12 Billion US dollars over field life of 16 years.