New Delhi, Nov 16: Upstream giant Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) is all set to kick-off its multi-billion dollar deep sea drilling campaign with drill ship Belford Dolphin touching Indian shores. Code named 'Sagar Samriddhi', meaning wealth from ocean, the largest deep sea drilling campaign in the world aims at discovering Rs 644,000 crore worth of hydrocarbons in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, company sources said.
The project involves investing 700 million dollars a day in search of one-third of estimated 11 billion tonnes of oil and oil equivalent gas reserves lying unexplored in deep sea.
Belford Dolphin, which anchored at Nava Sheva port near Mumbai yesterday, will spud its first well in gulf of Kutch at location GKDW-CA-1 in 1862-metre water depth on November 30.
ONGC has hired discoverer seven seas rig from Transocean Inc of US and the Belford Dolphin from dolphin drilling of UK besides its in-house Sagar Vijay rig for the deep sea campaign.
"Discoverer seven seas will arrive sometime in January," they said adding Dolphin will drill 17 wells on the west coast while American drill rig would spud 20 wells on east and south west coast.
Belford Dolphin will drill in water depths of up to 3000 metres while discoverer seven seas will drill in water depths of up to 1500 metres.
ONGC will pay Dolphin a day rate of 361,762.54 dollars for the Belford Dolphin while Transocean will receive 336,906.10 dollars per day for the discoverer seven seas. The fees will be inclusive of integrated management services that dolphin and Transocean will provide in consortia with tidewater and Schlumberger, respectively. Bureau Report