Reliance Industries Ltd and BP (British Petroleum) have announced the start of gas production from the R cluster of the KG Basin, the deepest off-shore gas field in Asia.

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Krishna-Godavari Basin

• The Krishna Godavari Basin is a proven petroliferous basin of continental margin located on the east coast of India.
• Its onland part covers an area of 15000 sq. km and the offshore part covers an area of 25,000 sq. km up to 1000 m isobath.
• The basin contains about 5 km thick sediments with several cycles of deposition, ranging in age from Late Carboniferous to Pleistocene.
• The major geomorphologic units of the Krishna Godavari basin are Upland plains, Coastal plains, Recent Flood and Delta Plains.

Minerals found

• KG inland and offshore basins have good prospects of tight oil and tight gas reserves from the conducted field studies.
• The first gas discovery in the basin was in 1983.
• Most of the conventional wells drilled and operated have a shorter lifespan than envisaged life and with erratic production.
• This may be due to drilling of conventional wells in tight oil and gas fields without horizontal drilling in the shale rock formations and hydraulic fracturing.

Note: Tight gas and tight oil are produced from reservoir rocks with such low permeability that considerable hydraulic fracturing is required to harvest the well at economic rates.

The KGD6 block

• Krishna Godavari Dhirubhai 6 (KG-D6) was Reliance’s first offshore gas field development and its first underwater discovery.
• It was also India’s largest deposit of natural gas and the largest such discovery in the world in 2002.
• The project takes its name from India’s Krishna-Godavari Basin, which covers more than 19,000 square miles (50,000 square kilometres) in Andhra Pradesh and production block D6 in the Bay of Bengal.

Why is this important?

• The R cluster, along with the Satellite Cluster and MJ gas fields in the KG Basin is expected to produce around 30 MMSCMD (million standard cubic metres per day) of natural gas.
• This is about 15% of India’s projected demand for natural gas by 2023.

Do they impact India’s energy security efforts?

• The three projects are a key part of the plan to boost domestic production of natural gas to increase the share of natural gas in India’s energy basket from 6.2% now to 15% by 2030.
• Increased domestic production of natural gas is an important aspect of reducing India’s dependence on imports and improves energy security.

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