ONGC revives 28-year-old Bassein field, sees record output in 2018
State-run explorer ONGC, for long the government’s whipping boy for declining output, has managed a global feat by restoring the 28-year-old Bassein gas field on the west coast to its past glory and is poised to score record production next year.
Three years of extensive efforts to rejuvenate the field has seen production rising by almost a quarter to 30 million cubic meters per day (mcmd) and is expected to rise to 34 mcmd shortly before hitting 37 mcmd by December 2018, according to company executives.
The field had seen its peak production of 29 mcmd in 2011 after which the output started falling as part of natural decline. But since December 2013, the ONGC team at Bassein and its satellite fields under the watch of executive director Sanjay Kumar Moitra launched a programme to revive the field.
Sources said since then, oil production from the asset more than doubled to 2.5 million tonnes from about a million tonne, making it ONGC’s second-highest oil producing asset. Projects worth Rs 13,181 crore to exploit C-26, Daman, Bassein and Vasai East discoveries will help ramp up the output further.
Located 80km off the Mumbai coast, the Bassein gas field was discovered in 1976 and put in production in 1988. It is currently ONGC’s fastest-growing asset, spread over 7,300 sq km. It had 393 billion cubic metres of initial gas in place, of which 248 bcm (about 7 trillion cubic feet) has been produced.
