India's natural gas output exceeds pre-Covid levels

New Delhi: India's natural gas production crossed the pre-Covid levels this week, helped by KG-D6 field of Reliance Industries Ltd and its partner BP Plc starting production.

"Domestic gas production of India crosses the pre-Covid level (77.8 million standard cubic meters per day on 1 March 2020) at 81.1 mmscmd on 27 December 2020," the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) said in a tweet. DGH, the government custodian of upstream oil and gas production in the country, said production levels are likely to be higher in 2021 calendar year. India had produced 2,331 million standard cubic metres (mmscm) of gas during November (77.7 mmscmd). This was 9.1 per cent lower than the same month last year. The fall in output was largely due to lower production by fields operated by the private sector, according to the Oil Ministry's Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC).

While state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd (OIL) continue to produce at almost the same levels as of November, the total gas production has risen because of R-Series fields in the KG-D6 block commencing production, a DGH official said. Reliance-BP had on December 18 announced the start of natural gas production from Asia's deepest project, when they put on-stream the ultra-deepwater R-Cluster, the first of the three deep sea projects the two companies are developing in the eastern offshore block.

R-Cluster is producing about 5 mmscmd and will touch peak production 12.9 mmscmd sometime next fiscal. Satellites fields in the same KG-D6 block, which are supposed to begin output from the third quarter of the 2021 calendar year, would produce a maximum of 7 mmscmd. MJ field will start production in the third quarter of 2022 and will have a peak output of 12 mmscmd. According to PPAC, India imported 12 per cent more gas (in LNG form) at 2,893 mmscm (96.4 mmscmd) in November.