Millennium
Discovery - Dhirubhai, an Indian Jewel
Bastia, Ravi1, R.
J. Singh1, Neeraj Sinha2 (1)
Reliance Industries Limited, Navi Mumbai, India (2)
Reliance Industries Limited,
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.
AAPG Search and Discover Article #90063©2007 AAPG Annual Convention, Long Beach, California