Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and British Petroleum (BP) JV on Friday commissioned the R Cluster, the ultra-deep-water gas field in block KG D6 off the East coast of India. This is India’s first ultra-deepwater gas project and the deepest offshore gas field in Asia with a water depth of greater than 2000 meters. This field is the first of three projects that are expected to meet about 15% of India’s gas demand and account for about 25% of domestic production by 2023.
The R Cluster is located about 60 kilometres from the current KG D6 Control & Riser Platform (CRP) off the Kakinada coast and comprises a subsea production system tied back to CRP via a subsea pipeline. The field is expected to reach plateau gas production of about 12.9 million standard cubic meters per day (mmscmd) in 2021. The Satellites Cluster is expected to come onstream in 2021 followed by the MJ project in 2022. Peak gas production from the three fields is expected to be around 30 mmscmd (1 bcf/d) by 2023.
India currently is the world’s third-largest primary energy consumer and BP’s Energy Outlook expects it to double by 2050. India consumes about 5,274mb/d of oil out of which more than 80% is imported. The gas consumption is about 60 billion cubic metres (165 mmscmd) and more than 50% is imported.
RIL and BP are jointly developing three deepwater gas projects in block KG D6 – R Cluster, Satellites Cluster and MJ. ” These projects will utilise the existing hub infrastructure in KG D6 block. RIL is the operator of KG D6 with a 66.67% participating interest and BP holds a 33.33% participating interest,” states the RIL release.