Reliance Quits its Myanmar Gas and Oil Blocks
India’s Reliance Industries (RIL) has relinquished its two Myanmar oil and gas blocks, thereby completing the divestment of its overseas conventional hydrocarbon assets.
“During the quarter, RIL relinquished the entire contract area of [its] two Myanmar Blocks (M-17 & M-18) at the end of the study (Technical Evaluation & Assessment) period,” the company said October 13, announcing its results for the quarter ended September 30.
RIL acquired the two blocks in 2014 and held a 96% stake in both; the remaining 4% stake in each block was owned by a domestic Myanmese company.
As of October 16 RIL’s overseas assets consists of two shale projects in the US only after it sold one of the assets earlier this month.
The company is now focusing on its Indian upstream business and, together with its partner BP, will invest $6bn in the KG-D6 block off the east coast of India over next three to five years to develop three projects.
Coalbed methane output rises
During the quarter, RIL began fully-fledged commercial production of coalbed methane (CBM). Total production for the quarter was 1.63bn ft3 compared with 0.30bn ft3 in the previous quarter ending in June 2017. Its current production rate is 25.42 mn ft3/d (reported as 0.72mn m3/d) with a gradual ramp up in progress, it said.
The revenue for Indian upstream operation was rupees 7.6bn ($0.12bn); a rise of 8.4% year on year that resulted from the start of CBM production, RIL said.
Shardul Sharma