Centre directs ONGC to operate Panna-Mukta offshore field

The central government has directed ONGC to operate the Panna-Mukta-Tapti (PMT) offshore fields from December 21, 2019. Earlier, Reliance and Shell each owned a 30 per cent participating interest in the PMT fields, while ONGC owned the balance 40 per cent. However, Tapti stopped production three years ago and the production from the other two fields started declining, prompting Reliance and Shell to plan on exiting the fields at the end of the 25-year lease in December 2019. Following this, the government has decided to transfer the remaining 60 per cent to ONGC as well. The scope of work includes deployment of a floating storage and offloading unit in the Panna field, moored to the new single-point mooring for safer evacuation of Panna crude with a minimum capacity of 15,000 barrels of crude oil per day and by using the tandem mooring and offloading system (by means of a hose streamed from the hose reel on the storage tanker) to the offtake tanker.