Indian private sector giant Reliance Industries and UK supermajor BP are nearing the completion phase for their giant MJ deep-water development project on the KG-D6 asset, which is likely to significantly boost gas output from the prized Indian east coast asset.

Announcing its first quarterly results, Reliance commented that the “final offshore subsea production system installation campaign is in progress and expected to be completed” during the ongoing financial quarter (July to September).

The operator said the floating production, storage and offloading vessel destined for the MJ development is “ready for sailaway from South Korea and expected to arrive during this quarter”.

In 2019, Reliance awarded a key contract to South Korea's Samsung Heavy Industries for the sizeable FPSO required for the MJ development.

The double-hulled vessel is built to handle 60,000 barrels per day of liquids and around 12.7 million cubic metres per day of gas, Upstream understands.

The floater is expected to have condensate production capacity of 30,000 bpd and water-handling capacity of at least 20,000 bpd, with the potential for the latter to be increased.

In addition to the FPSO commissioning, Reliance said that the “lower and upper well completion campaign has commenced” for the MJ development and offshore hook-up, pre-commissioning and commissioning are expected by the third quarter of the current financial year (between October-December).

Production boost

Reliance and BP are spending about $5 billion on further developing KG-D6 through three different projects, aimed at rejuvenating gas production from the offshore asset.

While the first two developments — R-cluster and Satellite Cluster, have started gas production, MJ is expected to come on stream within months.

Combined gas output from the R-Cluster Satellite Cluster stood at more than 19 MMcmd during the first financial quarter (April-June 2022), recent production data shared by the operator revealed.

Once on stream, MJ is expected to result in average production of 30 MMcmd of gas by 2023 from the KG D6 asset, meeting up to 15% of India’s gas demand.

Located on Block KG-D6 in water depths of between 600 and 1200 metres, the MJ development includes seven production wells to be linked to the FPSO via a pair of subsea drill centres.

MJ's reservoirs are about 2000 metres below the producing D1-D3 gas fields and the development is expected to be the third largest on the block.

The three projects are crucial to BP and Reliance’s strategy of boosting production from the east coast block, where gas production has been dwindling in recent years.

BP chief executive Bernard Looney earlier said these “three new KG-D6 projects will support the country’s drive to shape and improve its future energy mix".

Reliance holds a 66.67% operated interest in KG-D6, with BP holding the remaining 33.33%.

By Nishant Ugal in New Delhi