NEW DELHI, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp. and Cairn India Ltd. say their consortium is awaiting regulatory approval of its discoveries in the Krishna-Godavari basin.
The consortium said after approval from the regulator, the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons, the two companies planned to drill five wells in the K-G basin off the Andhra Pradesh coast.
"The Directorate General of Hydrocarbons is currently studying the allocation of development costs and potential of the discovery in the K-G block," said an official with state-run ONGC.
The ONGC-led consortium plans to invest more than $5 billion to produce 25 million standard cubic meters per day of gas from its eastern offshore K-G fields by 2013. It submitted an appraisal program of the discoveries in the block to the upstream regulator late last year, putting the in-place reserves at 6.37 trillion cubic feet, local media reported Tuesday.
The consortium said it has plans to drill five wells in the K-G block, including three appraisal and two exploration wells. ONGC will soon begin a 15-month appraisal phase, a company official said.
The company is expected to submit a field development plan to the government by early next year for action. It will be based on the studies of its deep-water find at the ultra-deep-water UD-1 well and other marginal discoveries in the acreage.
