Reliance Industries Ltd and bp p.l.c. on Friday announced the start of regular production from the MJ field in the KG-D6 block

MJ is the third and the last discovery in the KG-DWN-98/3 or KG-D6 block, off the east coast, jointly developed by the consortium.

All three discoveries, with MJ being the deepest, were made more than a decade back and have been progressively put into production.

The three fields are expected to produce around 30 million standard cubic metres of gas a day (mmscmd), which is expected to account for around one-third of India’s current domestic gas production and meet approximately 15 per cent of demand.

Discovered in 2013 and sanctioned in 2019, the MJ field is located in water depths of up to 1,200 metres about 30 kilometres from the existing onshore terminal at Gadimoga on the east coast.

Previously, the production from the R-Cluster field started in December 2020 and the satellite cluster in April 2021.

MJ is a high-pressure and high-temperature (HPHT) gas and condensate field. The field will produce from eight wells and reach a peak production of around 12mmscmd gas and 25,000 barrels of condensate per day. However, the companies did not disclose when the peak output would be reached.

A Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel – the ‘Ruby’ – will process and separate the condensate, gas, water and impurities before sending the gas onshore for sale. Condensate is stored on the FPSO before being offloaded to shuttle tankers for supply to Indian refineries.

“We continue to be proud of our partnership with bp that combines our expertise in commissioning complex projects under some of the most challenging environments in the last few years,’’ Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of RIL, said.