TOI: Seven years on, KG basin gas story runs out of steam

In 2005, while addressing students at IIM-Ahmedabad, Reliance Industries (RIL) chairman Mukesh Ambani compared India's east coast to the Gulf of Mexico. Gas discoveries by RIL, ONGC and GSPC in mid-2000 had placed India among top 20 gas producing countries in the world. But little did Ambani know then that the potential of these discoveries was a bubble that will burst within a couple of years of production, much like the Seven Heads, Neptune and Holstein finds in the Gulf of Mexico.

Reliance had pegged its possible gas reserves in the KG basin at 14 trillion cubic feet (tcf), the biggest in the world in 2002. In 2005, GSPC announced discoveries with a resource potential of 20 tcf and valued at $50 billion, followed by ONGC's 10 tcf finds. In 2009, RIL's partner Hardy Oil announced discoveries of another 20 tcf in blocks D4 and D9, taking the total discovered possible gas reserves in the KG basin to over 64 tcf. MORE