NEW DELHI: India's natural gas production jumped 22.7 per cent in April after Reliance Industries Ltd and its partner BP Plc ramped up output from their eastern offshore KG-D6 block, government data released on Friday showed.
India produced 2.65 billion cubic meters of natural gas in April, up from 2.16 bcm in the same month last year, as per the data released by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.
While state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation's (ONGC) production was flat at 1.72 bcm, output from fields operated by the private sector and joint ventures tripled to 710.86 million standard cubic meters.
The bulk of this came from 409.12 mmcm output from eastern offshore fields. The data did not give individual field productions. Reliance-BP, which in December last year started putting the second wave of gas discoveries in KG-D6 block to production, last month started output from the Satellite Cluster fields.
However, India's crude oil production slipped 2 per cent to 2.49 million tonnes as state-owned ONGC and Oil India Ltd (OIL) produced less. Oil refineries processed 35 per cent more crude at 19.88 million tonnes in April when compared to the year-ago period, when economic activity had almost come to a halt because of a stringent nationwide lockdown.
Reliance Industries Ltd's twin refineries at Jamnagar processed 5.5 per cent less crude oil at 5 million tonnes, while Nayara Energy had a 16.5 per cent higher crude throughput at 1.6 million tonnes. Public sector refiners processed 62.2 per cent higher crude at 11.5 million tonnes.
RIL's only-for-exports refinery operated at 77.7 per cent capacity in April, while the older unit operated at a 102 per cent run rate.
State-owned refiners operating run rate was 98.35 per cent, the data showed. The refineries produced 31 per cent more fuel at 20.9 million tonnes in April. During April 2020 refiners had cut operating rates as fuel demand halved because of the lockdown.