INDIA
India’s First Deepwater Offshore Field
Showcases Ingenuity
Pramod Kulkarni, Contributing Writer
India’s first deepwater oil and gas field, located in the KG-D6
block 60 km off the east coast of India in the Bay of Bengal,
is a success story of government initiative, private enterprise,
and global engineering ingenuity. Operated by Reliance
Industries, a multinational corporation based in Mumbai,
KG-D6 is a world-class discovery at 1200-m depth with
proved plus probable reserves of 11.3 Tcf. The fast-track
construction of the oil and gas production facilities involved
the mobilization of engineering talent, manufacturing capa-
bilities, and construction skills in the US, Europe, the Middle
East, and Asia (Fig. 1). In the process, the KG-D6 field
has set numerous world records and milestones for India’s
emerging oil and gas industry.
First Success of Licensing Round
The KG-D6 block was awarded in 2000 to a partnership of
Reliance Industries (90%) and Niko Resources of Calgary
(10%) in the first licensing round initiated by the govern-
ment of India through its New Economic Licensing Program
(NELP). Before NELP, India carried out E&P activities
through public-sector companies such as the Oil and Natural
Gas Corporation (ONGC). ONGC remains the leading
operator in India, but eight rounds of NELP have opened the
country’s oil and gas sector to a variety of other public-sector
companies (Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum, Gujarat State
Petroleum Corporation), international oil companies (Cairn
Fig. 1—Control and riser platform (CRP) for KG-D6
gas production while under construction.
30
Energy, British Gas, Eni), and Indian private companies in
addition to Reliance (Essar, Jubilant).
Reliance Industries is an Indian conglomerate with exten-
sive operations in the textile, petrochemical, and retail sec-
tors with annual revenues of USD 28 billion. The company
was launched in 1962 as yarn trading company by Dhirubhai
Ambani. The growth of the company is a study in vertical
integration. From yarn, Reliance built textile mills, petro-
chemical complexes, and entered the upstream oil and gas
industry in 1999.
Deepwater Discoveries
The Krishna-Godavari (KG) Basin covers an area of more
than 20 000 km2 on land and extends into the bay more than
24 000 km2 down a steep slope to 2000-m depth (Fig. 2). The
Krishna and western part of the Godavari troughs are filled
with mainly Paleozoic and Mesozoic sediments, while the
eastern part of the Godavari trough contains a predominantly
Upper Mesozoic and Tertiary section. The discovery of biogen-
ic gas has been made primarily in the Upper Pliocene plays.
The KG-D6 fields were discovered after a coarse 2D seismic
survey followed by a focused 7,600-sq-mile 3D survey. On the
seismic data, high-impedance anomalies correspond to reser-
voirs of coarse-grained sandstone, and low-impedance anom-
alies are associated with two reservoir types: 1) thick, well-
sorted, coarse- to medium-grained sandstone; and 2) thick
KG-D6 Industry Firsts and India Milestones
2002: Reliance announces KG-D6, India’s biggest gas
discovery in nearly three decades and one of the
largest gas discoveries in the world.
2008: First oil begins flowing from the MA-D6 field. The
subsea system and FPSO were delivered in fewer
than 16 months. The entire field development
from first discovery to first oil was fast-tracked in
fewer than 30 months.
2009: Start of gas production in 6½ years from discov-
ery, in comparison to the world average of 9–10
years for similar deepwater production facilities.
2009: At the peak of offshore construction, Reliance
de-ployed the largest marine construction
spread in the world, consisting of 89 vessels in a
400-km2 area.
JPT • FEBRUARY 2010
Fig. 2—The KG-D6 block is located in the Bay of
Bengal.

sections of interbedded, well-sorted, medium- to fine-grained

sandstone and shale. Reliance has thus far made more than
34 hydrocarbon discoveries in the KG-D6 block. The MA-D6
discovery has been producing oil since September 2008. The
two major gas discoveries, D1 and D3, began producing in
April 2009. At peak production, the gas fields are expected
to produce 80 million std m3/d, twice India’s national gas
production from other fields. In March 2003, the Transocean
deepwater rig, Discover 534, discovered Dhirubhai-4, with
in-place gas volumes of 1.7 Tcf (Fig. 3).
In February 2006, Reliance announced that it had encoun-
tered the thickest hydrocarbon column to date, the MA-2
well (approximately 2 km from the MA-1 discovery well)
reaching a depth of approximately 3.6 km and penetrating a
gross hydrocarbon column of 194 m consisting of 170 m of
gas/condensate (53°API) and 24 m of oil (42°API). The KG
Basin is yielding large discoveries in adjacent blocks as well.
ONGC has made an ultradeepwater UD-1 discovery in block
KG-DWN-98/2, which contains an estimated 2–14 Tcf in gas
reserves. Gujarat State Petroleum has made several major Fig. 3—Reliance has used the Transocean Discoverer
discoveries in its KG-OSN-2001/3 block. 534 drillship to drill several KG-D6 discovery wells.

KG-D6 Oil Production
Reliance implemented an Early Production System to pro-
duce oil from the MA-D6 field using an FPSO. Originally the
Polar Alaska, a suezmax oil tanker built in the US in 1979,
the Dhirubhai-1 FPSO was custom built by Aker Borgestad in
the Jurong Shipyard to handle an extremely high gas-content
oil stream (Fig. 4). First oil was produced in September 2008
at 5,000 B/D with future production expected at as much as
50,000 BOPD. The FPSO has a processing capacity of 9 mil-
lion m3 of gas and 60,000 BOPD. Total storage capacity on
the FPSO is 1.3 million bbl of oil. The gas is transported by
pipeline to a shore-based terminal. The FPSO will be operated
from the small Norwegian village of Brevik through a spe-
cially designed system for integrated operations. “Everything
that happens on the ship, right down to the opening or clos-
ing of a valve, we can follow as it is happening on our screens
in the operations room here in Brevik,” said Aker Borgestad
Operations Chief Executive Officer Gard Madsen. “We see
exactly the same data that they have on the ship itself at the
same time that they see it, enabling us to provide minute-to-
minute support.”
The MA-D6 was a fast-track project in an area that had no
logistical infrastructure and provided a subsea construction
window of only four months. Aker Solutions, which was the
principal subsea contractor, and Technip, which provided the
flexible flowlines and the umbilicals, implemented parallel
design processes to speed up the project, but had to incorpo-
rate design changes because of the presence of a shallow hard
zone of sediments and change from mild-weather to high-
temperature flexible risers. The innovative subsea design
incorporates 10 risers in a pliant-wave configuration that are
connected to the FPSO via a disconnectable turret buoy. The
disconnection was deemed necessary in case of rapid evacu-
ation to avoid damages due to cyclones that are endemic
to the Bay of Bengal. The subsea construction team had to
contend with strong eddy currents and drifting fishing nets
dropped by numerous local fishing boats. Subsea installa-
tions were carried out by remotely operated vehicles (ROVs)

JPT • FEBRUARY 2010 31

INDIA
at seabed depths ranging from 600 to 1200 m, beyond diver
depths. Subsea trees for the project were manufactured at
Aker Solutions’ facilities in Port Klang, Malaysia, and Tranby,
Norway. Subsea control systems were manufactured in
Aberdeen and umbilicals by Technip in Moss, Norway.
KG-D6 Gas Production
Reliance began production of gas from the D1 and D3
discoveries in April 2009. The production facility consists
of wells and subsea installations, which are connected by
flowlines and production risers to a CRP. From the CRP,
seven pipelines are routed up the Nilaveru River to an
onshore terminal approximately 60 km from the gas fields
near the village of Gadimoga. The terminal has four gas-
processing trains, each with a capacity of 20 million std
m3/d. After dehydration and compression, the gas is fed into
a newly constructed 48-in. east-west pipeline to transport
the gas 1386 km across the country to various power and
fertilizer plants. At peak production, the KG-D6 facility has
the capacity to produce 80 million std m3/d of gas with the
capability for a modular addition to 120 million std m3/d.
In January 2006, Reliance awarded Bechtel the contract
for project-management consultancy, covering engineering,
procurement, installation, and commissioning. To fast-track
the project, Bechtel employed its resources in 22 countries.
The engineering was performed in Australia, England, India,
The Netherlands, Norway, Scotland, and the US. “The team
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Fig. 4—Dhirubhai-1 FPSO can be evacuated in case
of an approaching cyclone with the use of a discon-
nectable turret.
was so widely dispersed that there was just a one-hour win-
dow each day when projectwide meetings could be held due
to time-zone differences,” said Scott Baker, project controls
manager in Houston.
On the seabed, Aker Solutions has installed more than
2400 line km of flowlines and umbilicals to construct the
deepwater production system. Subsea installations were car-
ried out by ROVs at seabed depths ranging from 600 to 1200
m. The installation required 11 suction anchors, which hold
in place the production manifolds, deepwater pipeline end
manifold, and subsea control equipment. The anchors were
set into the seafloor once the water/mud slurry was evacu-
ated with an ROV. At the peak of offshore construction, the
project required the largest marine construction spread in the
world, comprising of 89 vessels in an area of 400 km2. For
the CRP, J. Ray McDermott performed its engineering design
in Houston and then constructed the 9,015-ton jacket at its
Morgan City, Louisiana fabrication yard. After a short sail to
its Pascagoula, Mississippi port, McDermott sent the jacket
on a 13,375-mile, 46-day journey to Batam Island, Indonesia
via the Suez Canal. From Indonesia, the jacket was towed to
its installation site in the KG-D6 field in 12 days. The jacket’s
piles and topsides were built at J. Ray’s Jebel Ali yard in the
United Arab Emirates.
Among the issues Reliance is facing with the KG-D6 wells
are sand control because of unconsolidated sand forma-
tions and reservoir compaction and subsidence in both the
upper and lower completions. As a preventive measure, the
well-completion design included a continuous reservoir-
monitoring system with fiber-optic pressure and temperature
gauges across the sandface. The monitoring system will also
aid in the early detection of water breakthrough and the
development of optimum reservoir-depletion strategies over
the productive life of the wells.
Reliance is now conducting conceptual studies for the
development of another eight discoveries near the D1 and
D3 gas fields. The satellite discoveries are likely to be tied to
the D1 and D3 production facilities. The company has also
identified more than 25 other prospects, some of them in
deeper Cretaceous sequences, with estimated hydrocarbon
potential of 39 Tcf of gas and 1,600 million bbl of oil. JPT
JPT • FEBRUARY 2010