Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) will start natural gas production from the MJ field — the third and the last set of discoveries that the company is developing in the eastern offshore KG-D6 block — in the last quarter of 2022 to raise the overall output by about two-thirds.

In an investor presentation announcing first-quarter earnings, RIL said it has completed its first offshore installation campaign and a second one would begin in November.

“Drilling and completions of wells (are) underway,” it said. “First gas expected by Q3 of FY23.” Financial year 2023 starts in April 2022 and the third quarter would be October-December 2022.

RIL and its partner BP plc of the UK plan to use a floating production system at high-sea in the Bay of Bengal to bring to production the deepest gas discovery in the KG-D6 block.

The MJ-1 gas find is located about 2,000 metres directly below the Dhirubhai-1 and 3 (D1 and D3) fields — the first and the largest fields in KG-D6 block. MJ-1 is estimated to hold a minimum of 0.988 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of contingent resources. The field also has oil deposits which would be produced using a floating system, called FPSO.

“FPSO and subsea production systems (are) on track,” the company said.

RIL-BP are developing three deep-water gas developments in block KG-D6 — R Cluster, Satellite Cluster and MJ — which together are expected to produce around 30 million standard cubic metres per day of natural gas by 2023, meeting up to 15 per cent of India’s gas demand.

R-Cluster started production in December 2020 and the Satellite Cluster came onstream in April. While R-Cluster is expected to reach plateau gas production of about 12.9 mmscmd in 2021, Satellite Cluster will have a peak output of 6 mmscmd. The MJ field will have a peak output of 12 mmscmd.