gas auction: RIL to auction 12 mmscmd gas from MJ Field

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) will shortly call bids for 12 million metric standard cubic metres per day (mmscmd) of gas from its MJ field in the eastern offshore Krishna Godavari D6 block, said two executives aware of the development. The MJ field is the third and the last set of discoveries that RIL is developing in the KGD6 block.

“RIL’s deep-water field gas will come on stream this fiscal. We are planning to bid for the same when it comes for auction,” said the senior executive of a company that plans to participate.

RIL, which didn’t respond to queries, is the operator of the block with a 66.67% stake while its partner BP holds 33.33%.

MJ-1 is estimated to hold a minimum of 0.988 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of contingent resources. The MJ field also has oil deposits that will be produced using the floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) system.

“We will be bidding when RIL announces the auction,” said the second executive. “One needs to see what the price discovery will be. Since this is deep-water gas, there will be a premium attached to it over the $9.92 per mmbtu price.” The Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PAC) this month raised the price of gas from deepwater fields, also known as high pressure high temperature (HPHT) fields, for the first half of FY23 by 62% to $9.92 per mbtu (metric million British thermal unit).