LNG

LNG importer India said plans were advancing for more exploration and production of domestic energy resources as the nation was preparing to launch a 10th bidding round for oil and gas blocks in August or September.

Indian liquefied natural gas imports surged by more than 20 percent last month helped by lower prices and higher domestic gas demand while gas output offshore the Bay of Bengal also increased.

UK major BP more than doubled annual profits, though was hit by slowing natural gas prices during the fourth quarter and expected a flat 2023 with among the main highlights being the start-up of two LNG projects in West Africa and Indonesia.

UK major BP posted underlying replacement cost profit, its equivalent of net profits, of $8.2 billion in the third quarter, a two-and-a-half times jump from the $3.3Bln posted in the same three months of 2021.

Reliance Industries, the leading Indian energy company supplying natural gas to supplement LNG imports, reported an almost 57 percent jump in fiscal third-quarter revenues while its domestic natural gas price was at just over $6 per million British thermal units.

Reliance Industries, the Indian group behind the resurgence of the country’s domestic natural gas production in competition to LNG, has sold its stake in the US Eagle Ford Shale play in south Texas to a Delaware-registered company.

McDermott International, the Houston-based LNG and energy engineering company said it had completed work on the Reliance Industries-operated Satellite Cluster natural gas field in the Krishna Godavari Basin offshore the Indian East Coast to provide more supplies for the LNG importing nation.

The Sultanate of Oman is making progress with developing the Sohar Port and Freezone that is also the future site of an LNG bunkering project on the Arabian Sea coast and near the entry to the Gulf by the Strait of Hormuz.

McDermott International, the US energy engineering company, has completed the Krishna Godavari Basin D6 block's Cluster field subsea gas development offshore the East Coast of India to meet rising domestic gas demand along with LNG imports.

McDermott said it achieved pre-commissioning and ready for start-up status for Indian company Reliance Industries, whose partner in the joint venture is BP of the UK.

BP and Reliance had announced in mid-December 2020 that first gas had been produced from the R Cluster field project.

The UK and Indian partners are developing three deepwater gas projects in block KG D6, called the R Cluster, Satellites Cluster and MJ fields.

Together these fields are expected to meet 15 percent of India’s gas demand by 2023.

“The safe and successful completion of Reliance's KG-D6 R Cluster project is a testament to McDermott's subsea experience in the Bay of Bengal,” said Ian Prescott, McDermott's Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific.

“Pre-commissioning and ready for start-up was achieved despite difficult circumstances - two severe cyclones during the first campaign and, in the second, navigating the challenging conditions of Cobvid-19,” added Prescott.

“It is an outstanding achievement and demonstrates McDermott's commitment to reliable execution,” he stated.

For the KG-D6 R Cluster project, McDermott built a yard facility in India for the fabrication of risers, jumpers and marine logistics support.

The Houston-based company explained that the project comprised two offshore campaigns.

During the first campaign, the “DLV 2000” vessel completed McDermott's first piggy-back pipelay in S-lay mode (18-inch plus a four-inch) in 4,265 feet (1,300 metres) water depth.

It also included the installation of the first ever ultra-deepwater structure, weighing 343 tons, for the “DLV 2000”.

Several six-inch pipelines, PLETs and manifolds were installed in water depths up to 6,447 feet (1,965 meters). In addition, McDermott installed India's longest dual riser.

The second campaign included installation of manifolds, manifold piles, flowlines, PLETs (S-mode and J-mode), in-line structures, jumpers and umbilicals in ultra-deepwater depths, together with major brownfield modifications to Reliance's control and riser platform.

Successful flowline and umbilical installation were completed in 6,561 feet (over 2,000 meters) water depth using three McDermott vessels: “DLV 2000”, “Lay Vessel 108” and “North Ocean 102”.

These Reliance-BP projects will utilise the existing hub infrastructure in KG D6 block with BP holding 33.33 percent and Reliance as the operator of KG D6 owning 66.67 percent.

The R Cluster was the first of the three projects to come onstream.

The field is located about 60 kilometres from the existing KG D6 Control & Riser Platform (CRP) off the Kakinada coast and comprises a subsea production system tied back to CRP via a subsea pipeline.

The R Cluster field is expected to reach plateau gas production of about 12.9 million standard cubic metres per day in 2021.

Doris Engineering, the French energy contracts company, and Hyundai Heavy Industries of South Korea have been awarded the front-end engineering and design contract for the phase-three development of a key natural gas project offshore Myanmar in the Bay of Bengal.