Essar Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Ltd’s (EOGEPL) increasing focus on clean and green energy is being appreciated by none other than one of its biggest stakeholders —the Director General of Hydrocarbons (DGH). A high level delegation led by the Additional Director General (Development), Dr. Anand Gupta, recently visited the project site at Raniganj East to assess the development progress of the asset as it prepares to begin supplies to the proposed Urja Ganga pipeline next year. EOGEPL’s Raniganj East project is a standalone testimony of commercial coal bed methane (CBM) development with its wide operational presence across the site, with nearly 350 wells and a robust infrastructure set up.
The high level delegation from DGH, under the aegis of the union ministry for Petroleum and Natural Gas, had visited the site to have a first-hand interface with the CBM project team, view the facilities and also identify the support required from EOGEPL. During the two-day visit, Mr. Santosh Chandra, CEO, and Mr. Rajendran Kannan, COO- EOGEPL, made detailed presentations to the visiting delegations on the project progress, key strengths and learnings, followed by detailed discussions on future plans as well as key issues or impediments. The delegation also held meetings with the operations team of GAIL India who are working very closely with EOGEPL’s team for commissioning of the gas supplies to the Urja Ganga pipeline. They also visited the nearby fertilizer plant owned by Matix Fertilisers, the sole consumer of the natural gas initially. Mr. Gupta requested the GAIL team to exercise all possible options of expediting the commissioning of Urja Ganga pipeline and promised all support for the same.
The DGH team, led by Mr. Gupta, expressed appreciation for EOGEPL team’s efforts towards the Raniganj project’s excellence and promised to convey the same to the senior officials in Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. The DGH delegation’s visit is very timely as just last month Mr. Chandra had announced that EOGEPL was committed to multiply CBM production and help India be atma-nirbhar for clean & green energy.
EOGEPL is a niche upstream E&P Company focused in the development of Unconventional Hydrocarbon Gas (primarily CBM) in India and has 15 trillion cubic feet of Unconventional gas in its portfolio. The company’s flagship asset is its Raniganj East CBM field and out of the few CBM blocks, the company has achieved commerciality and recorded + 1.0 mmscmd of gas production. Separately, EOGEPL is continuously working towards creation of the Raniganj block as a model of ’social license’ of ‘sustainable CBM development’.
