New Delhi: Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and its affiliates have picked up over 75 percent of the gas bid out from the firm's gas field in the KG-D6 blocks off the east coast off India, multiple sources aware of the matter told PSU Watch. The news comes a week after Reliance and UK's BP conducted an auction for 500 MMSCMD of incremental gas from the gas fields in the KG-D6 block which recently commenced commercial production. According to sources, Reliance's Oil-to-Chemical (O2C) business picked up around 3.2 MMSCMD of gas in the auction.
Sources said that the price discovered in the auction was a USD 0.06 discount to the JKM (Japan-Korea Marker) LNG price. This translates into a price of USD 8-9 per million British thermal unit (mmBTu). However, at the auctioned price, buyers ended up paying less than half of this price.
According to sources, India Gas Solutions (IGS), which is a gas sourcing joint venture of Reliance Industries and BP — picked up another 1 MMSCMD. The list of buyers also included Adani Gas at 0.15 MMSCMD, IRM Energy at 0.10 MMSCMD, GAIL at 30,000 cubic metres per day and Torrent Gas at 20,000 cubic metres per day.
Reliance and partner BP recently announced the start of natural gas production from its Satellite Cluster gas field on April 26 and R Cluster on December 18, 2020. RIL and BP are developing three deepwater gas projects in block KG D6 – R Cluster, Satellites Cluster and MJ – which together are expected to meet ~15 percent of India's gas demand by 2023. These projects will utilise the existing hub infrastructure in KG D6 block. RIL is the operator of KG D6 with a 66.67 percent participating interest and UK's BP holds a 33.33 percent participating interest.
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