Fracking success for ONGC at Rajahmundry
ONGC is worried about its overall production, but at Rajahmundry, it's celebrating a fracking success story.
Last month (July 2024), ONGC completed and fracked at least three Phase-I wells with plans to drill at least one or two more. Since Halliburton carried out the first phase of fracking at ten wells in the Malleswaram field in 2022, production has jumped from 190 b/d (30 cm/d) to 1900 b/d (300 cm/d) - on some days.
Total Rajahmundry asset production is 5500 b/d, which at times has even touched 6157 b/d this year (2024). Malleswaram produces a good quality light crude oil, we hear.
Halliburton's fracking job was the first attempt since ONGC drilled the wells in 1978-79. Then asset manager Amit Narayan and well services head RM Patil shepherded the programme.
Once Malleswaram tasted success, ONGC added the Nagayalanka field at the 54-sq km NELP-V block KG-ONN-2003/1 to its programme and awarded a contract to Baker Hughes for Phase-II fracking. Between October 2023 and February 23 (2024), the asset's production jumped from 4434 b/d to 5864 b/d, a 25% increase.
Baker's contract expires in December 2024, but with ONGC tasting success, it won't mark the end of fracking in Rajahmundry. Malleswaram production is currently averaging at least 945 b/d (150 cm/d).
"Every time ONGC drills a well at the field, it moves pumps there for fracking," says our source. ONGC chairman Arun Singh, director production Pankaj Kumar and director technical and field services OP Singh visited the fracking sites in Rajahmundry in January 2024.
By early March (2024), Santanu Das, an experienced fracking expert, had replaced Narayan as asset manager. "He is good," says Narayan of Das, who he describes as a hardcore well services man.
"The great thing about this project is that the increased production is sustainable." Experts say fracking's cost-effectiveness is not to be sniffed at: Halliburton's contract was just Rs25cr ($3m), while the Baker Hughes contract was less than Rs40cr ($4.7m).
That translates into hardly Rs2.5cr ($300,000) as the cost of fracking each well.