The Mumbai High Field, formerly called the Bombay High Field, is an offshore

oilfield A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface accumulation of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations. Such reservoirs form when kerogen (ancient plant matter) is created in surrounding rock by the presence ...

176 km off the west coast of

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

, in Gulf of Cambay region of India, in about 75 m of water. The oil operations are run by India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC). Mumbai High field was discovered by an Indo-

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

oil exploration team operating from the seismic exploration vessel ''Academic Arkhangelsky'' during mapping of the

Gulf of Khambhat The Gulf of Khambhat, historically known as the Gulf of Cambay, is a bay on the Arabian Sea coast of India, bordering the state of Gujarat just north of Mumbai and Diu Island. The Gulf of Khambhat is about long, about wide in the north and u ...

(earlier Cambay) in 1964–67, followed by a detailed survey in 1972. The naming of the field is attributed to a team from a survey run in 1965 analysed in the Rashmi building in

Peddar Road Gopalrao Deshmukh Marg is an arterial road in the city of Mumbai, India, passing through the affluent Cumballa Hill neighbourhood. The road is named after a social activist and first Mayor of Bombay (present-day Mumbai) after India's Independe ...

, Cumballa Hill, Mumbai. The first offshore well was sunk in 1974. Every oil resource rock requires Structural traps which are mainly salt dome, coral reefs, fault trap and fold trap. In case of Mumbai High, the structure is a "north-northwest to south-southeast trending doubly plunging

Anticline In structural geology, an anticline is a type of fold that is an arch-like shape and has its oldest beds at its core, whereas a syncline is the inverse of an anticline. A typical anticline is convex up in which the hinge or crest is the ...

with a faulted east limb", 65 km long and 23 km wide", and is the most probable reason to call it "Mumbai High".

Geology

This is a

carbonate A carbonate is a salt of carbonic acid (H2CO3), characterized by the presence of the carbonate ion, a polyatomic ion with the formula . The word ''carbonate'' may also refer to a carbonate ester, an organic compound containing the carbonate g ...

reservoir, the main producing zone, L-III, consisting of sedimentary cycles of

lagoon A lagoon is a shallow body of water separated from a larger body of water by a narrow landform, such as reefs, barrier islands, barrier peninsulas, or isthmuses. Lagoons are commonly divided into ''coastal lagoons'' (or ''barrier lagoons'') a ...

al,

algal Algae (; singular alga ) is an informal term for a large and diverse group of photosynthetic eukaryotic organisms. It is a polyphyletic grouping that includes species from multiple distinct clades. Included organisms range from unicellular mic ...

mound,

foraminifera Foraminifera (; Latin for "hole bearers"; informally called "forams") are single-celled organisms, members of a phylum or class of amoeboid protists characterized by streaming granular Ectoplasm (cell biology), ectoplasm for catching food and ot ...

l mound and then coastal marsh, capped by a post-middle

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recen ...

shale Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4) and tiny fragments (silt-sized particles) of other minerals, especial ...

. Mumbai High has three blocks separated by east–west trending faults, all three with different gas-oil contacts but approximately 1355 m deep.

Production

As of 2004, it supplied 14% of India's oil requirement and accounted for about 38% of all domestic production. On 27 July 2005, a major fire destroyed the production platform, leaving at least 22 people dead despite rescue measures taken by the

Indian Coast Guard The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) is a maritime law enforcement and search and rescue agency of India with jurisdiction over its territorial waters including its contiguous zone and exclusive economic zone. The Indian Coast Guard was formally esta ...

. The platform accounted for , or 15% of India's oil production. Rebuilding this is expected to take upwards of 4 months and estimated to cost around Rs. 1200 crore or US$300 million. ONGC approved construction of seven pipelines with risers and associated top-side facilities in MHN in April 2007. These pipelines are vital for optimum utilisation from Mumbai High. Crude oil produced from Mumbai High is considered to be of very good quality as compared to crudes produced in middle east. Mumbai High crude has more than 60% paraffinic content while light Arabian crude has only 25% paraffin. In November 2009, output of Mumbai High fields, that accounted for half of the India's domestic oil production, fell 5.3% to . In 2018 the output of the field was . In 2020 the output of the field was and the output of the Bassein field was . ONGC temporarily suspended operations at two drilling rigs in the Mumbai High and Bassein fields after 54 employees tested positive for coronavirus and one died but the oil and gas production was not impacted. https://www.newindianexpress.com/business/2020/jun/22/ongc-suspends-operations-at-two-rigs-in-arabian-sea-after-corona-positive-cases-tightens-safety-nor-2159943.html> As of 2020 Mumbai High and Bassein were India's top oil and gas producing fields, accounting for almost two-third of the country's production.

References

{{Reflist, 2, refs= Rao, R.P., and Talukdar, S.N., Petroleum Geology of Bombay High Field, India, in Giant Oil and Gas Fields of the Decade:1968-1978, Halbouty, M.T., editor, AAPG Memoir 30, 1980, Tulsa: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, {{ISBN, 0891813063, p. 487

External links

Mumbai Offshore Basin
Oil fields in India Energy in Maharashtra India–Soviet Union relations ONGC oil and gas fields