Joshi plans five-well drilling campaign at Dholka field
Oklahoma-based Joshi Technologies has chalked out an ambitious Rs195cr ($37m) development campaign at its producing Dholka field in central Gujarat.
In Phase-I, the first of five wells will be spud in December, using a 1000-hp rig hired from John Energy. “Everything is in place to start the campaign by mid-December,” Joshi tells this report.
The 48-sq km Dholka field sprawls across two districts of Ahmedabad and Dholka in central Gujarat. Three of the five wells will be drilled in Kheda district, and two in Ahmedabad district, each to a depth of up to 1800 metres.
Joshi says it plans to target the ‘Lower’, ‘Middle’ and ‘Upper Cretaceous’ geological formations. Each well should take around 30 days and drilling will continue until May 2013.
Joshi’s decision to embark on development of Dholka follows a five year extension granted on June 5 for its twin Dholka and Wavel (north Gujarat) fields from February 2013 till 2018. Dholka is a small field, producing just 755 b/d and 32,000cm/d gas from 27 wells.
Crude is ferried by tanker to ONGC’s Nawagam tank farm, from where it is supplied to the 13.7m t/y (274,000 b/d) Koyali refinery operated by IndianOil. Gas is sold at Rs6/cubic metre ($0.11) to five local ceramic producers in Dholka.
Joshi is confident the planned development campaign will add another 225 b/d to current production. Back-of the-envelope calculations suggest each producing well will incur a yearly ‘maintenance cost’ of around Rs20 lakh ($40,000).
Joshi secured possession of the Dholka and Wavel fields on October 20, 1995 after signing a PSC on February 20, 1995 following a licensing round launched three years earlier for the development of 18 small discovered fields.