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India’s first deepwater oil and gas field, located in the KG-D6 Energy, British Gas, Eni), and Indian private companies in
block 60 km off the east coast of India in the Bay of Bengal, addition to Reliance (Essar, Jubilant).
is a success story of government initiative, private enterprise, Reliance Industries is an Indian conglomerate with exten-
and global engineering ingenuity. Operated by Reliance sive operations in the textile, petrochemical, and retail sec-
Industries, a multinational corporation based in Mumbai, tors with annual revenues of USD 28 billion. The company
KG-D6 is a world-class discovery at 1200-m depth with was launched in 1962 as yarn trading company by Dhirubhai
proved plus probable reserves of 11.3 Tcf. The fast-track Ambani. The growth of the company is a study in vertical
construction of the oil and gas production facilities involved integration. From yarn, Reliance built textile mills, petro-
the mobilization of engineering talent, manufacturing capa- chemical complexes, and entered the upstream oil and gas
bilities, and construction skills in the US, Europe, the Middle industry in 1999.
East, and Asia (Fig. 1). In the process, the KG-D6 field
has set numerous world records and milestones for India’s Deepwater Discoveries
emerging oil and gas industry. The Krishna-Godavari (KG) Basin covers an area of more
than 20 000 km2 on land and extends into the bay more than
First Success of Licensing Round 24 000 km2 down a steep slope to 2000-m depth (Fig. 2). The
The KG-D6 block was awarded in 2000 to a partnership of Krishna and western part of the Godavari troughs are filled
Reliance Industries (90%) and Niko Resources of Calgary with mainly Paleozoic and Mesozoic sediments, while the
(10%) in the first licensing round initiated by the govern- eastern part of the Godavari trough contains a predominantly
ment of India through its New Economic Licensing Program Upper Mesozoic and Tertiary section. The discovery of biogen-
(NELP). Before NELP, India carried out E&P activities ic gas has been made primarily in the Upper Pliocene plays.
through public-sector companies such as the Oil and Natural The KG-D6 fields were discovered after a coarse 2D seismic
Gas Corporation (ONGC). ONGC remains the leading survey followed by a focused 7,600-sq-mile 3D survey. On the
operator in India, but eight rounds of NELP have opened the seismic data, high-impedance anomalies correspond to reser-
country’s oil and gas sector to a variety of other public-sector voirs of coarse-grained sandstone, and low-impedance anom-
companies (Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum, Gujarat State alies are associated with two reservoir types: 1) thick, well-
Petroleum Corporation), international oil companies (Cairn sorted, coarse- to medium-grained sandstone; and 2) thick
KG-D6 Oil Production same time that they see it, enabling us to provide minute-to-
Reliance implemented an Early Production System to pro- minute support.”
duce oil from the MA-D6 field using an FPSO. Originally the The MA-D6 was a fast-track project in an area that had no
Polar Alaska, a suezmax oil tanker built in the US in 1979, logistical infrastructure and provided a subsea construction
the Dhirubhai-1 FPSO was custom built by Aker Borgestad in window of only four months. Aker Solutions, which was the
the Jurong Shipyard to handle an extremely high gas-content principal subsea contractor, and Technip, which provided the
oil stream (Fig. 4). First oil was produced in September 2008 flexible flowlines and the umbilicals, implemented parallel
at 5,000 B/D with future production expected at as much as design processes to speed up the project, but had to incorpo-
50,000 BOPD. The FPSO has a processing capacity of 9 mil- rate design changes because of the presence of a shallow hard
lion m3 of gas and 60,000 BOPD. Total storage capacity on zone of sediments and change from mild-weather to high-
the FPSO is 1.3 million bbl of oil. The gas is transported by temperature flexible risers. The innovative subsea design
pipeline to a shore-based terminal. The FPSO will be operated incorporates 10 risers in a pliant-wave configuration that are
from the small Norwegian village of Brevik through a spe- connected to the FPSO via a disconnectable turret buoy. The
cially designed system for integrated operations. “Everything disconnection was deemed necessary in case of rapid evacu-
that happens on the ship, right down to the opening or clos- ation to avoid damages due to cyclones that are endemic
ing of a valve, we can follow as it is happening on our screens to the Bay of Bengal. The subsea construction team had to
in the operations room here in Brevik,” said Aker Borgestad contend with strong eddy currents and drifting fishing nets
Operations Chief Executive Officer Gard Madsen. “We see dropped by numerous local fishing boats. Subsea installa-
exactly the same data that they have on the ship itself at the tions were carried out by remotely operated vehicles (ROVs)