Millennium Discovery - Dhirubhai, an Indian Jewel

Bastia, Ravi¹, R. J. Singh¹, Neeraj Sinha² (1) Reliance Industries Limited, Navi Mumbai, India (2) Reliance Industries Limited, Mumbai, India

Dhirubhai discovery offshore Krishna Godavari basin was the largest hydrocarbon discovery in the year 2002, which heralded a new chapter in the oil and gas scenario of Indian deepwater. The super giant discovery, which came in the very first well drilled in a water depth of 650 m, 35 km from the coast, was named after the founder Chairman Shri Dhirubhai Ambani, as a tribute and testimony to his great vision, grit and gut feel.

With scanty 2D seismic in a 7650 sq km block area, Reliance initiated focused and concept based exploration program combining cutting edge technologies and superior project execution skills. In the span of 20 months after the receipt of exploration license the world-class discovery was made. Subsequently, about 35000 mts of sediment has been drilled in several wells and multi-stacked reservoirs established in deep water meandering channel-levee-overbank complexes.

Several milestones have been achieved in course of the exploration journey:

- A gross pay thickness of 340m in the very first well.

- Excellent quality stacked reservoirs with multi Darcy permeabilities.

- High per well deliverability.

- Huge potential established in unconventional thin-bedded levee-overbank sands using high resolution petrophysical techniques.

- Large number of independent channels and fan lobes identified by attribute analysis.

- First deepwater discovery scheduled to be developed and put on production in a record time of five to six years from the date of discovery.

Dhirubhai discovery has been the largest in the last three decades and is indeed the Indian jewel, which has immense potential to provide energy security for the country.