About 25 power plants have been allocated gas from the KG-D6 fields, but supply stopped completely with output declining to 17.3 million standard cubic meters a day (mmscmd).
On a priority basis, Reliance supplied about 15.2mmscmd of gas from the block to urea producing fertilizer plants whereas another 2mmscmd was delivered to Indian state-owned GAIL’s LPG extraction units.
The rest of the supply was utilized to power the East-West pipeline, which transports the fuel from Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh to Brauch in Gujarat.
Fall in output led to the closure of the Ratnagiri Gas and Power owned 1,967MW power plant at Dabhol in Maharashtra.
Located in the Bay of Bengal, the KG-D6 fields commenced gas production in April 2009, producing a maximum of 69.43mmscmd in March 2010.
However, water and sand ingress resulted in closure of over a third of the wells.
Power companies have begun to struggle to continue operations on just imported fuel with natural gas prices significantly higher than the $4.205 per million British thermal unit price of KG-D6 gas.
Recently in February, BP and Reliance Industries have unveiled plans to expand the KG-D6 block to increase production.
