R-Series drilling plans put back to 2019

Reliance has postponed plans to drill six development wells at the R-Series discoveries within KG-DWN-98/3 until 2019.

"Drilling will only start in 2019," a senior Reliance source tells us, categorically. "That decision has been taken.

We have informed all our vendors that we will need supplies of drilling consumables only in 2019. They can use the orders received from us to raise money or bid for other projects.

We don't have a problem with that." He adds that to develop R-Series a subsea pipeline will be laid from producing wells linking them to an established control riser platform at the producing D1 and D3 fields. "Infrastructure is already in place for this," he says.

In November 2016 Reliance accepted bids from five contractors in a tender to hire a deepwater drillship and other services for R-Series: Vantage Drilling, Seadrill, Noble Drilling, Odfjell Drilling and Transocean. In June (2017) Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani and BP chief executive Bob Dudley announced a $6bn investment plan to develop R-series to produce 12m cm/d gas from 2020.