Oil Discovery in Krishna Godavari Basin India—3rd Podcast Trivia of AAPG UPN SC

AAPG UPN SC

Cairn India has made an oil discovery in the Krishna-Godavari Basin located off the East Coast of India. Vedanta Limited announced the discovery on Wednesday 27/3/2019. According to Vedanta, the oil discovery made in the seccond exploratory well H2, located in the block KG-OSN-2009/3, in the Krishna-Godavari Basin. Multiple reservoir zones were encountered in the well H2 within the Mesozoic sequence between the depths of 3310 m to 4026 m with hydrocarbon indications during drilling and down hole logging. The zone from 3403m to 3431m was tested through conventional well testing (Drill Stem Test) and flowed oil to surface. The company noted that further appraisal would be required to establish the size and commerciality of the oil discovery in the Mesozoic sequence. The KG basin is a proven basin where there have been many hydrocarbon discoveries. This basin was known as the biggest natural gas basin in India and as previously reported, the first exploration well A3-2 drilled in the block was a gas discovery. And Evaluations are ongoing based on the results of the first well A3-2 and the second well H2 to finalize the forward program. Cairn India, the company Vedanta bought and merged with itself, had in June 2010 won the KG-OSN-2009/3 block in the 8th round of New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP). It had committed to drill six exploratory wells on the block. These were expandable to 10. The company acquired around 1,000 square kilometres of 3D seismic data based on which it drilled two wells. KG-OSN-2009/3 offshore block in the Bay of Bengal was originally spread over in an area of about 1,988 sq km which was later reduced to 1,298 sq km due to exclusion of area within firing range. It is located in the shallow waters of the Indian Ocean along the East coast of India, approximately 1.5 km from the Indian coastline.