Invenire Energy To Invest $500 Million In Madhya Pradesh Coal Block

Oil and gas explorer Invenire Energy will invest $500 million (about Rs 4,137 crore) over the next 10 years to produce gas from coal seams (CBM) in a block in Madhya Pradesh, its chairman Manish Maheshwari said.

Invenire Petrodyne Ltd (IPL), a subsidiary of the company, won a Coal Bed Methane (CBM) block SP-ONHP(CBM)-2021/1 in Madhya Pradesh.

The revenue-sharing contract for the block, which is estimated to hold 2 trillion cubic feet of in-place resources, was signed in September. Invenire received a production licence this month.

"We plan to drill 350 wells in the first phase with a target to flow first gas in 2024," he said.

The block is estimated to have a plateau of 3 million standard cubic metres per day of gas, which can be used to fire power plants, manufacture fertiliser or turned into CNG to run automobiles.

The government is focused on raising domestic natural gas production to help increase the share of the environment-friendly fuel in India's primary energy basket to 15 per cent by 2030 from current 6.7 per cent.

CBM will supplement conventional gas output in the country. India currently imports roughly half of its gas needs.

"The full cycle investment in CBM is likely to be of the order of $500 million over a 10-year period," he said.

Plateau production is likely in the 2025-26 fiscal year.

The block, saddled between the Chhindwara and Betul districts of Madhya Pradesh, is spread across 1,771 square kilometres.

It holds the potential to produce in excess of 1 trillion cubic feet (Tcf).

Invenire's portfolio also includes three fields that it had acquired in the government's third bid round of Discovered Small Field (DSF) recently.

The fields, B66, B154 and B203 in the prolific Mumbai Offshore basin, has 8 oil discoveries with an inplace reserve of 344 million barrels of oil. They can conservatively produce 110 million barrels of oil during a 20-year primary production term.

The three blocks are spread over an area of 2,604 sq km and located in shallow water depths ranging from 30 to 82 metres, according to the company's website.

The company is also looking to set up a floating LNG receipt facility at Haldia to meet the rising energy demand in the country, Manish Maheshwari said, adding, imported gas can be the feedstock of the refinery, petrochemical plant and city gas network.