Jubilant to Commence Drilling in India

Jubilant Energy has announced commencement of development drilling at the Deen Dayal West gas condensate field off the Andra Pradesh coast in India.

The Field Development Plan (FDP) envisages a total of 11 new wells, the first four of which will be batch drilled by the jack-up Deep Sea Driller-1 over the field’s wellhead platform in a water depth of 60 metres in the Krishna Godavari basin, the company said in an update on Tuesday.

This apart, four existing wells will be recompleted. The jack up rig used for the appraisal campaign will be redeployed to accelerate the first gas production within 2013.

A more cost-efficient modular rig is likely to be installed on the platform by January next year, with a total of seven wells to be drilled or recompleted before the field comes online, it said.

The FDP for the Krishna Godavari block (KG-OSN-2001/3), which includes the gas-condensate wells KG-8, KG-15, KG-17 and KG-28, was approved by the Government of India in November 2009. The Mining Lease area for DDW is 17 sq kms.

Jubilant holds a 10% interest in this block through its Indian subsidiary Jubilant Offshore Drilling Pvt Ltd while Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation is the operator with the balance 80%.