The formerly producing Cambay oil and gas field, located onshore in Gujarat, India, is planned to recommence gas production from two existing wells. Oilex, a company based in Australia, holds 100% interest in the field and operates it.
Oilex plans to drill two new hydraulically fractured horizontal wells in Q4 2022 and Q12023 to support further development of the onshore gas field.
The Cambay field was last producing under a production sharing contract (PSC) between operator Oilex (45%) and Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC, 55%) until the first quarter of 2019, when the field was placed on care and maintenance due to a legal dispute between the two partners over GSPC’s failure to pay its share of Cambay PSC expenses.
Oilex reached a settlement agreement with GSPC to resolve the Cambay PSC dispute in September 2019 and acquired 55% participating interest in the field from GSPC in 2021. The acquisition was approved by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas of the Government of India in February 2022.
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India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change granted a new environmental clearance to restart production at the Cambay field in the same month.
Location, discovery and reservoir details
The Cambay onshore gas field is located in Khambat Taluka, Anand district, Gujarat, 100km south of Ahmedabad, India. It is spread over 161km2 within the Cambay Basin that also hosts the Ankleshwar, Kalol, Sobhasan and Gandhar fields.
India’s state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) discovered oil at Cambay in 1958, which was considered to be the first oil discovery outside of Assam in India.
The Cambay field contains oil and gas resources in the Miocene, Oligocene and Eocene reservoirs. The current field development targets the Eocene EP-IV tight siltstone reservoir, which is estimated to contain 930 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas and 61 million barrels (Mbl) of condensate.
Production restart and Cambay field development plan
Oilex plans to restart gas production from two existing Cambay wells, namely C-73 and C-77H. It is also re-fracking the Cambay 77H well for which funding was secured in December 2021.
The production test results obtained from the C-77H re-fracking are expected to support the drilling of two new horizontal wells, namely C-78H and C-79H, at the Cambay field in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
The gas output of the onshore field will be handled by the existing production and storage facilities and a gas pipeline.
Contractors involved
A consortium of Manan Oilfield Services and Bedrock Drilling was contracted to provide well management services for re-fracking the existing C-77H well and drilling two new hydraulically fractured horizontal wells at Cambay in October 2021.
Cambay field history
ONGC had developed the Cambay field by drilling as many as 54 wells from 1957 to 2014. India’s Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, GSPC, and operator Niko Resources signed a PSC to develop the Cambay field in September 1994.
Five additional wells were drilled at the field from 1994 to 2006 under Niko’s operatorship. Oilex became the field’s operator by acquiring Niko’s stake in the Cambay asset in 2006. It drilled nine new wells at Cambay by 2014 and worked over several legacy wells at the field from 2015 to 2017.
The cumulative gas production from the field was estimated to be more than 104bcf as of 2019.