Reliance Industries has reported a decline in natural gas output from its eastern offshore KG-D6 fields to a two-year low of 39.80 million standard cubic metres per day.
    

Separately, Oil Minister S Jaipal Reddy told Parliament that as many as six wells in the Krishna-Godavari basin KG-D6 block have ceased gas production due to water-loading and sand ingress.
    

Gas production from the Dhirubhai-1 and 3 gas fields and the MA oilfield in the KG-DWN-98/3, or KG-D6, block in the Bay of Bengal stood at 39.80 mmscmd in the week ended December 4, RIL said in its weekly status report to the Oil Ministry here.
    

The output, which comprised 32.94 mmscmd from the D1 and D3 gas fields and 6.86 mmscmd from the MA oilfield, is lower than the 40 mmscmd that RIL achieved within 90 days of the commencement of production on April 2, 2009.

KG-D6 production touched 61.5 mmscmd in March last year before a drop in pressure in the wells and water-loading/sand ingress led to a fall in per-well gas output.
    

"The Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) has reported that the reasons for the decline in gas production from D1 and D3 is due to drilling of only 22 wells, as against the 31 producing wells approved for drilling up to March, 2012, as per the field development plan," Reddy said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.
    

Of the 22 wells drilled, four wells have not been put on production, he said, adding that the DGH has not agreed with RIL's argument that geological complexities prevented it from drilling more wells. The DGH, the technical advisor to the Oil Ministry, has asked RIL to "comply with the approved FDP by drilling more number of gas-producing wells in the D1 and D3 gas fields and achieve the FDP-approved gas production profile," Reddy said.
   

The output from KG-D6 is short of the 70.39 mmscmd-level (61.88 mmscmd from D1&D3 and 8.5 mmscmd from the MA field) envisaged by now as per the FDP approved in 2006. D1 and D3 output was to touch a peak of 80 mmscmd by March, 2012.
    

"The contractor (RIL) has neither drilled the remaining nine producing wells nor taken any alternative action such as revisions of the FDP for approval of the Management Committee (MC) as per the provisions of the Production Sharing Contract," he said.
    

The Management Committee is an oversight body comprising representatives of the contractor, the DGH and Oil Ministry.  "In addition, five out of total 18 gas producing wells in D1&D3 fields have ceased to produce gas due to water-loading/ sand ingress in the wells. One oil/gas producing well in the MA field out of six oil/gas producing wells has ceased to produce oil/gas due to water-loading in the well," Reddy added.

In the status report, RIL projected an output of 39.50 mmscmd of gas during December.