Thursday, July 28 2005 16:16 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), India's biggest oil producer, will restore in two weeks time, about 70 per cent of the 100,000 barrels per day output, lost due to the massive fire at platform in Mumbai offshore.

The platform called Mumbai High North (MHN), which accounted for 27 per cent of the 365,000 barrels per day oil production from Mumbai High fields, ONGC's largest, was gutted in a major fire yesterday (July 27, 2005) killing at least 12 people.

"We have a contingency plan in place. The 15 wells that poured oil into MHN will be looped to other platforms in the area. We hope to restore 70 per cent of the MHN's production in two weeks time," said an ONGC Director from Mumbai.

The Mumbai High fields, 160 km northwest of Mumbai in the Arabian Sea, produced more than half of the country's oil production, of about 682,000 barrels a day (34 million tonnes), are broadly divided into two, Mumbai High North and Mumbai High South.

"Production from Mumbai High North has halted but it is business as usual in the South," the official said.

Mumbai High South produces 265,000 barrels of oil per day.

"Our first priority is relief and rescue operations. A smaller team is working on the contingency plan to restore production," the official said.

About 2.5 million tonnes of Mumbai High crude is fed into Indian Oil Corporation's (IOC) Mathura, Koyali and a small quantity to its subsidiary Chennai Petroleum Corporation Limited (CPCL). Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited's Mumbai Refinery gets about four million tonnes of Mumbai High crude while the rest goes to Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited's Mumbai refinery.

The ONGC official said a new platform will have to be built to replace the completely destroyed MHN. "Constructing a new platform would take anywhere between one to two years but we are confident of restoring the production levels of 100,000 barrels per day in less than six months time."

The reduced output from Mumbai High fields would mean the refiners would have to import more.

"We have had a slack domestic demand and have to see how much crude do we need additionally," said an official at IOC.

MHN was built in 1981 and was used to separate gas and impurities from the crude oil produced from 15 wells in its vicinity, before feeding it into the MUT (Mumbai High-Urban Trunk crude oil pipeline) for taking it to shore.