Ahmedabad (Platts)--2Sep2010/642 am EDT/1042 GMT

India's largest upstream oil company, Oil and Natural Gas Corp., is expecting additional gas production of around 15 million cubic meters/day from three blocks off the country's west coast within three to four years, a senior company official said Wednesday. To support the additional output, which will come from the B-12, C-23 and C-24 offshore blocks, the state-owned company plans to set up a new gas processing facility in the western state of Gujarat, said D K Pande, director of exploration at ONGC, adding that land acquisition for the facility was underway. He was speaking to Platts in Ahmedabad on the sidelines of the spudding of ONGC's deepest onshore well WJAI (Karananagar-2). The B-12, C-23 and C-24 blocks are estimated to have gas reserves of 97.23 Bcm and recoverable reserves of 42 Bcm, said Pande. They are part of the Daman Offshore fields and were discovered three years ago. "We currently produce between 32 to 35 million cu m/d of natural gas from Bombay High and nearby fields and with the help of new discoveries [B-12, C-23, C-24], we would be able to produce additionally around 15 million cu m/day gas from the offshore fields on the west coast," said Pande. ONGC produces around 23 million cu m/d natural gas from the offshore Bassein fields, including Vasai East and the nearby Bombay High. Bombay High also produces around 10 million cu m/d of associated gas which is processed at ONGC's Uran processing facility on the west coast in Maharashtra. The Bassein field gas is processed at the Hazira gas processing facility in Gujarat along with gas produced from offshore Panna Mukta Tapti (PMT) fields. The PMT offshore project has three partners, including operator British Gas India (30%), Reliance Industries Limited (30%) and ONGC (40%). In all, the Hazria gas processing facility processes approximately 46 million cu m/d of gas. In addition to the 15 million cu m/d of gas expected from the B-12, C-23 and C-24 blocks, ONGC is planning further production from the C-series offshore fields of 3 million cu m/d of gas, Platts reported previously. Gas production from the C-series fields is expected from 2013, said Pande. The C-series fields comprise 22 wells and 8 platforms. ONGC has developed 6 of these wells and they are currently producing 0.6 million cu m/d of gas. Once the remaining wells begin production, total output from the C-series fields will hit 3 million cu m/d, said Pande. --Kamlesh Trivedi, newsdesk@platts.com Similar stories appear in Oilgram News See more information at http://www.platts.com/Products/oilgramnews/