New Delhi: Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) has made a huge gas find of about 21 trillion cubic feet (tcf) in Bay of Bengal.
ONGC struck a 28-meter net gas pay zone when deepsea drillship Belford Dolphin reached 5,300 meters depth at well UD-1, 55-km from the coast.
"The ultra-deepwater well UD-1 is yet to reach its target depth of 6,500 meters and vertical seismic profile has thrown up at least one more pay zone larger than the one encountered. There could also be oil," an industry source said as quoted by PTI. "ONGC might be planning a new year gift to the nation with this (discovery)".
The well UD-1 will reach its target depth in next 10 days and testing will take another week.
The state-run firm had done a mud drill test of the ultra-deepwater well UD-1 and preliminary estimate put in-place reserves at 600 billion cubic meters (over 21 tcf).
However ONGC Director (Exploration) Dinesh Kumar Pandey finds it too early to comment on reserves and prefers to wait for conventional testing results before hazarding any guess on the size of the discovery.
ONGC had bought 90 per cent interest in the block in September 2003 from Cairn Energy Plc of UK, which was awarded the deepwater block under the first round of New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP).
Cairn had made a couple of finds, including the one tcf Annapurna discovery, before farming out the block to ONGC.
ONGC had previously discovered 2-3 tcf of gas reserves in about half-a-dozen wells in the Krishna Godavari Basin block.
Reliance Industries Ltd estimates 50 tcf of in-place reserves in neighbouring KG-DWN-98/3 block, while Gujarat State Petroleum Corp had last year found 20 tcf reserves in a shallow water block in the same basin.
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