OREANDA-NEWS. Essar Oil, a leading player in India’s oil and gas sector, today said that gas production at its Raniganj asset in West Bengal has crossed 0.5 million standard cubic metres per day (scmd), thereby making it India’s largest coal bed methane (CBM) gas producer.

While nearly 100 wells have been already placed on gas production, an additional 155 wells have been drilled and are at various stages of the hydrofracking-completion-dewatering cycle for further production ramp up. The company has built high quality infrastructure gas conditioning and compression stations, in-field pipelines of 120km and last mile pipeline connectivity network to end users of approximately 60km. The company anticipates completing the development program ahead of the May 2016 deadline as per the contract with the Government of India. With a total investment outlay of approximately Rs 4000 crores, the Raniganj Project is the first of its kind in India aimed to responsibly produce methane gas from the coal seams located 1000 meters or deeper below the ground. Gas from this project shall be the feedstock to the priority fertilizer sector with the anchor customer being Matix Fertiliser & Chemicals Ltd., having the world’s largest single stream plant for ammonia and urea located in West Bengal.

“With unity of conception, technology and team effort, we have been able to register a multifold increase in CBM production to 0.55 million scmd and expect to ramp up delivery to 1.2 million scmd over the next few months by bringing wells on production stream which are drilled and presently under completion and dewatering phase," said Mr Manish Maheshwari, CEO - E&P, Essar Oil.

About Essar Oil
Essar Oil is a fully integrated oil and gas company of international scale with strong presence across the hydrocarbon value chain from exploration and production to refining and oil retail. Essar Oil owns India’s second largest single site refinery having a capacity of 20 MMTPA and complexity of 11.8, which is amongst the highest globally. It has a portfolio of onshore and offshore oil and gas blocks with about 1.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent in reserves and resources. There are more than 1,400 Essar-branded oil retail outlets in various parts of India with another 600 in various stages of commissioning.