India’s Reliance Industries has dished out a substantial subsea production systems (SPS) contract for its $2 billion-plus MJ deep-water gas and condensate field at the flagship KG-D6 asset off India's east coast.

Schlumberger subsidiary OneSubsea is understood to have won the deal.

Multiple sources told Upstream that Reliance recently awarded the SPS contract to OneSubsea after a competitive tender process.

While the value of the subsea contract could not be confirmed, one source suggested that the SPS job could be worth between $150 million to $200 million.

Four leading international subsea players were thought to have submitted bids to Reliance last year, but OneSubsea is believed to have pipped other bidders, including UK-based TechnipFMC, Norway’s Aker Solutions and Baker Hughes.

The SPS workscope comprises eight subsea trees, two production manifolds and one gas export manifold from a floating, production, storage and offloading vessel to the onshore processing terminal, according to sources.

The SPS contract for the MJ gas and condensate development follows the award last month of an engineering, procurement, construction and installation deal for the FPSO to South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries.

The newbuild FPSO contract is valued at $967 million and the vessel is likely to be delivered by the middle of 2021.

In addition to the SPS and the floater job, Reliance is expected to finalise within days a separate contract comprising the subsea umbilicals, flowlines and risers EPCI package for the MJ project.

TechnipFMC and US giant McDermott International are thought to be battling it out for that package.

The MJ development is expected to include seven production wells linked to a pair of subsea drill centres tied back to the FPSO.

MJ's reservoirs are about 2000 metres below the producing D1-D3 gas fields and the development is expected to be the third largest in the block.

Reliance and its block partners have made 19 gas discoveries at KG-D6.

However, gas production from the existing fields at KG-D6 has been in continuous decline since coming on stream amid reservoir performance challenges.

The three ongoing further development projects at KG-D6 — R-series, MJ and Satellite Cluster — are crucial to Reliance's plan to rejuvenate gas production from the flagship east coast asset.

Together, they are expected to add 1 billion cubic feet per day of incremental production by 2022.

In 2017, Reliance dished out several key contracts involving the R-series deep-water development.

McDermott won the R-series SURF contract, while the SPS package was also won by OneSubsea. TechnipFMC was handed the umbilicals package.

Reliance — headed by managing director Mukesh Ambani — operates the KG-D6 block with a 60% interest, with BP holding 30%.

The remaining 10% stake is held by Canada-listed company Niko Resources.

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Reliance picks winner for MJ field subsea contract