The destructive attack of COVID-19 and tax row with the authorities concerned have put on hold the imperative drilling of kanchan well by ONGC Videsh Ltd.<\/p>\n
Sources said the Indian oil and gas company had a plan to initiate drilling an exploratory well at Kanchan in shallow sea (SS) block-04 last year.<\/p>\n
But the spread of coronavirus globally and subsequent lockdown, and restricted movement of personnel and equipment delayed the job.<\/p>\n
drilling equipment that reached before the pandemic in March 2020 requires fresh ‘fitness’ test before drilling, according to a senior Petrobangla official.<\/p>\n
To check fitness, the equipment need to be re-sent to their respective testing centres outside Bangladesh, he said.<\/p>\n
The ONGC and its drilling subcontractors are already in a payment spat due to the delays, market insiders said.<\/p>\n
Before the onslaught of coronavirus, a dispute over advance income tax and demurrage payment on drilling equipment was delaying drilling the well.<\/p>\n
Alongside the partly resolved row, the coronavirus issue emerged as a major obstacle to doing the job, they added.<\/p>\n
The ONGC planned to drill the well, buoyed by the findings of 2D (two dimensional) seismic surveys.<\/p>\n
It, however, has recently floated tender to pick contractors with intent to drill two exploratory wells in two separate offshore blocks in the Bay of Bengal.<\/p>\n
The selected contractors would drill the wells-Titly in SS block-04 and Moitree in SS block-09, a senior energy ministry official told the FE on Monday.<\/p>\n
Drilling these wells is also mandatory for the Indian firm within its contract period by February 2023.<\/p>\n
Once carried out, it would be the first offshore drilling in the country’s sea territory after a span of four years.<\/p>\n
Australia’s Santos along with the Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company Ltd (BAPEX) in February 2017 drilled offshore Magnama-02 well under block-16 which was found dry after drilling.<\/p>\n
The joint venture had drilled the well to a depth of around 3,200 metres only to find it dry.<\/p>\n
The BAPEX counted an estimated $29 million in loss.<\/p>\n
Currently, no exploratory activity is being carried out at offshore blocks in the Bay.<\/p>\n
The country has no producing offshore gas well now and the entire natural gas output comes from onshore fields as well as from the import of liquefied natural gas.<\/p>\n
Any fresh discovery of hydrocarbon in an offshore field will boost the country’s future oil and gas reserves.<\/p>\n
To do the drill, the ONGC has already completed a portion of geo-hazard survey on the two blocks.<\/p>\n
The state-run Petrobangla earlier extended the tenure of its contract with the ONGC by two more years until February 2023 to boost offshore exploration.<\/p>\n
The deal was set to expire in February 2021 after an initial two-year’s extension.<\/p>\n
Petrobangla inked two production-sharing contracts (PSCs) with the ONGC on February 17 in 2014, which expired in February 2019.<\/p>\n
The ONGC, the operator of blocks 04 and 09, holds the participating interest of 45 per cent, the Oil India Limited 45 per cent and the BAPEX 10 per cent.<\/p>\n
The SS block-04 covers an area of 7,269 square kilometres and SS block-09 an area of 7,026 sq km.<\/p>\n
Water depth of both blocks ranges between 20 metres and 200 metres.<\/p>\n
As per the deal, the ONGC is committed to conducting 2,700 line-kilometre 2D seismic data acquisition and processing and one exploratory well in SS block-04.<\/p>\n
It is also committed to carrying out 2,700 line-kilometre 2D seismic data acquisition and processing and two exploratory wells in SS block-09.<\/p>\n
It will be allowed to run and sell oil and gas for 20 years from an oil well and 25 years from a gas well.<\/p>\n
The ONGC has already completed around 3,100 line-kilometre 2D seismic surveys for both blocks.<\/p>\n
The destructive attack of COVID-19 and tax row with the authorities concerned have put on hold the imperative drilling of kanchan well by ONGC Videsh Ltd. Sources said the Indian oil and gas company had a plan to initiate drilling an exploratory well at Kanchan in shallow sea (SS) block-04 last year. But the spread […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6048"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6048"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6050,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6048\/revisions\/6050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}