Indian Upstream Regulator Rejects Three ONGC Gas Discoveries

India’s upstream regulator Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) has rejected ONGC’s three gas discoveries in KG Basin for not doing its prescribed conformity tests, Press Trust of India reported Sunday.

The DGH has not approved Declaration of Commerciality (DoC) for three out of the 11 discoveries ONGC has made in its Krishna Godavari block KG-DWN-98/2 (KG-D5) in Bay of Bengal, sources told Press Trust.

According to the news agency, ONGC proposes to develop these finds in three clusters -- combining finds D and E in KG-D5 block with discovery in neighbouring G-4 block as Cluster-I and developing all other finds except ultra deepsea UD-1 discovery as Cluster-II. The UD-1 find is to be developed as Cluster-III.

Sources told Press Trust that while DGH is agreeable to DoC for the Cluster-II finds, it has not approved the same for discoveries D, E and UD-1 in absence of surface flow data and Drill Stem Test (DST) data.

UD-1 discovery alone holds 2.836 Trillion cubic feet of inplace gas reserves. Discoveries D and E hold 587.6 billion cubic feet of inplace reserves.

For Cluster-II, DGH has approved 1.42 Tcf of gas reserves and 140.891 million barrels of oil that would require a capex of $4.07 billion to develop, according to Press Trust.