ONGC receives board’s approval for procurement of stimulation vessel

Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) board approved the acquisition of a new stimulation vessel equipped with state-of-the-art technologies for Mumbai Offshore at an estimated cost of Rs 764.1 crore with foreign exchange (FE) component of $150 million and Rs 14.18 crore.

The new stimulation vessel will increase the productivity of oil and gas wells by removing the drilling induced damage, increasing the effective well bore radius and changing the flow regime into the well bore.

Presently well stimulation jobs are done by Samudra Nidhi, the only stimulation vessel owned by ONGC. The new vessel will not only augment stimulation jobs but will gradually replace Samudra Nidhi in a phased manner. The vessel will be procured through Lump Sum Turnkey (LSTK) contract.

Further, the board has also approved combined development of clusters of two western offshore fields namely B-22 cluster (comprising B-22, BS-12, BS-13 and B-149 marginal fields) and B-193 cluster (comprised B-193, B-172, B-178, B-179, B-180, B-28A, B-23A and B-28) at an estimated cost of Rs 8554.26 crore with FE component of $1697.27 million.

The idea of combining two projects by way of offloading the process requirement and related facilities, erstwhile considered to be taken up separately would amount to a saving of about $133 million.

The project is scheduled to be completed by March, 2012 and the cumulative hydrocarbon production from this combined project is estimated at over 21.5 million tonne of oil and oil equivalent gas (over 10 mmt oil and 11.5 BCM gas) over the next 15 years. While the gas production will commence by 2011, oil production is to begin by 2012.