Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has said that it has partnered BP to develop already-discovered deepwater gas fields, bringing new gas production for India.

The two companies have agreed to deepen and expand their partnership to work jointly across a wide range of areas throughout India’s energy sector.

RIL and BP announced that they will award contracts to progress development of the ‘R-Series’ deep water gas fields in Block KGD6 off the east coast of India. The R-series (D34) project is a dry gas development in water-depths of more than 2,000 metres, approximately 70 kilometres offshore.

“The R-series fields will be developed as a subsea tieback to the existing control and riser platform off Block KGD6. The project is expected to produce up to 12 million cubic metres (425 million cubic feet) of gas a day, coming on stream in 2020,” the company said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange.

This is the first of three planned projects in Block KGD6 that are expected to be developed in an integrated manner, producing from about 3 trillion cubic feet of discovered gas resources.

Meanwhile, shares of the company were trading at Rs 1375.85 apiece, down 0.62 per cent from the previous close at 09:30 hours on BSE.