ONGC's Tapti takeover to boost Daman gas venture

OREANDA-NEWS. Indian state-controlled upstream firm ONGC will accelerate work at its 52.2bn rupees (\$830mn) natural gas project in Daman on the west coast of India by taking over abandoned assets of the offshore Tapti gas field from its existing partners.

Tapti, whose assets include sub-sea pipelines and gas processing platforms, produces around 1mn m?/d of gas and will stop production by the end of this year. ONGC holds 40pc of Tapti with private-sector conglomerate Reliance Industries and UK energy firm BG owning 30pc each.

ONGC will lay a short pipeline from the Daman field to the Tapti platform, which in turn is connected through a 70km pipeline to ONGC's main gas processing complex in Hazira from where it can deliver gas across northern India.

Daman will start producing by July next year at 2mn m?/d, with peak output of 8.35mn m?/d of gas and 9,286 b/d of condensate by 2019. Cumulative gas production to 2034-35 is forecast at 27.67bn m?. India currently produces around 90mn m?/d of gas.

ONGC has also called on US blowout control experts Boots & Coots to control a fire that erupted over the weekend at a west India gas well. There is no output loss as the well was having repairs.

The fire at Olpad-31 in Surat district in Gujarat state happened on 18 April when the company was doing maintenance, injuring at least 12 people.

The incident comes less than a year after fires at gas pipelines of Indian state-controlled gas distributor Gail claimed at least 14 lives. The explosion at Gail's domestic gas pipeline in June in Andhra Pradesh state cut supplies for power generation by around 500,000 m?/d.