Reliance ready to open its wallet
India’s Reliance Industries has unveiled plans to spend $1.5 billion over the next three years on drilling and exploration operations, adding it has earmarked a further $500 million for seismic work.
“We have a major spending programme lined up for the next few years and even more on the development front. But for the next two to three years the current recession will continue and we expect the oil prices to remain low,” Reliance's international operations chief Atul Chandra said on the sidelines of the Petrotech conference in New Delhi.
Reliance has been working on various deep-water exploration and development programmes in the prolific Krishna Godavari basin and the Mahanadi basin, off the eastern coast of India.
The company has recently brought its first deep-water oil production at the MA field on stream via the Aker Smart 1 floating production, storage and offloading vessel. Flows from the field are currently at 10,000 barrels of oil per day.
However, the floater looks set to be shut in until the end of the month to rectify a technical problem.
By the end of next month, Reliance will also be producing between 15 million cubic metres of gas per day and 20 MMcmd from the D1 and D3 fields in the D6 Block.