How not to produce more crude from the south
Acute disappointment surrounds efforts to enhance ONGC's crude oil production from other areas of southern India.
One reason for this is the failure of a 'dual completion' project at Kesanapalli-6 in the Krishna Godavari Project. 'Dual completion' is a term used by ONGC engineers to describe production from multiple sands.
A source at ONGC south said the technique was more suited for western regions of India, and appears to have failed in the south. This, he said, has seriously compromised a recently set target for enhanced crude production from the Krishna Godavri and Cauvery projects, which together fall under the administrative umbrella of the Southern Regional Business Centre (SRBC) in Chennai.
Petrowatch learns that Chennai's target for crude production this financial year is 650,000 tonnes (approx: 13,350 barrels a day). However, since the beginning of the year combined crude production from Krishna Godavari and Cauvery has been just 11,250 b/d - a deficit of2,100 b/d.
To try to meet the target, ONGC south now plans a second attempt at 'dual completion' for Kesanapalli-6. It has also diverted resources to increase production from the Cauvery project and the annual target for Cauvery production has been increased to 400,000 tonnes (8,200 b/d) from 375,000 tonnes (7,700 b/d).
As expected, gas production shows no sign of tapering off. This report learns SRBC has set a target of 1,245m cubic metres of gas production this fiscal (approx: 3.4m cm/d) but confidently expects to surpass the target by at least 125%, or average production of 7.8m cm/d.