Massive Cairn drilling plans at Jaya block
Vedanta-promoted Cairn Oil & Gas has set out plans to drill up to 51 appraisal and development wells at its OALP-1 block CB-ONHP-2017/2 in Gujarat - the site of its promising Jaya discovery.
On April 4 (2024), the environment ministry accepted Cairn's proposal and referred it to the Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) after Cairn applied for clearance on February 28 (2024). Expect the EAC to issue the Terms of Reference (ToR) to Cairn shortly.
Once it receives the ToR, Cairn will hold public hearings and prepare an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report in the hope of securing environmental clearance. "The estimated project cost is Rs2385cr ($286m) and likely to be completed in 10-12 years," said Cairn in its application.
At the 317-sq km block, Cairn plans to drill 51 appraisal and development wells from 22 new well pads. Cairn also plans to set up a central processing terminal for well fluid and associated utilities.
In addition, a 60-km pipeline is planned to connect wells to the central processing terminal, which will collect the well fluid and bring it to the terminal. Cairn announced a gas and condensate discovery on August 23 (2021) at well Jaya-1 - the first discovery at any OALP block.
In November 2021, Cairn offered 90,000 cm/d and up to 1500 b/d from the block to prospective bidders. Cairn successfully auctioned gas to GAIL in December (2021) and subsequently entered into a seven-year contract starting March 1 (2022).
This agreement stipulates that Cairn will supply GAIL with 90,000 cm/d transported through an 18-kilometre pipeline to GAIL's network in South Gujarat at a price linked to Brent crude. On September 9 (2023), Cairn spud well Jaya SW-1 using 1000-hp Rig-1521 hired from Kiri Group and on January 3 (2024), Cairn announced that production had increased from 104 b/d for the third quarter of 2023 to 1760 b/d for the fourth quarter of 2023.
After the development programme, Cairn envisages production of 2.8m cm/d (100m cf/d) of gas and 30,000 b/d of oil.