Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) is set to develop its most promising deep-water hydrocarbon block in the Krishna-Godavari (KG) basin with help of consultants. ONGC’s KG blocks had received interest from international players in the past but delays on the part of the government in approving the proposals had thwarted their entry. Potential international partners like Shell and ConocoPhillips have shied away from taking stakes or providing technological expertise.

According to a news report in The Financial Express, the company can produce from deep water blocks on their own but an international exploration company as a partner would help bring in greater efficiencies and cost effectiveness due to their experience in handling deep-water blocks in different geographies.

As ONGC does not have expertise in developing deep water fields, it requires assistance in understanding various aspects of production from these zones including environmental impact, geophysics, geology, reservoir and production engineering, infrastructure, well design and construction, completion design, surface facilities, and economics and risk assessment.

ONGC’s KG basin blocks holds about 4.85 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves (22 million metric standard cubic metres per day of gas at peak production) and indicated oil reserves of around 100 million tonnes. They will be the company’s first significant producing block in the technologically challenging deep-water zone when it comes on stream in 2017-18.