Krishna Delta Canals Trim Cairn’s Kaza Plan to 20 Wells

Andhra’s water department cleared 20 of 35 Cairn well sites in Krishna district on December 22, 2025, and blocked the rest to protect irrigation canals. The no-objection certificate covers irrigation only and is temporary. Vedanta’s Cairn Oil and Gas still needs every other statutory clearance before a rig can move on the Kaza block, and it cannot take a drop from the Bandar Canal or the Krishna Delta System.

That is not a drilling permit. It is a canal fence, drawn by irrigation engineers through a rice-and-aquaculture delta whose drinking water and fields already run on the same network the company wanted to drill beside.

Irrigation Engineers Took 15 of 35 Sites off the Map

Cairn had asked the Water Resources Department for an NOC at 35 locations in the KG/ONDSF/KAZA/2018 block, a 114.93 square kilometre onshore patch in Krishna district, because the Bandar Canal runs through the centre of it. The Chief Engineer of the Krishna Delta System found 15 of those sites too close to the canal and drainage network and refused them. The remaining 20 sit more than 500 metres from irrigation canals, and the order bars drilling or construction inside that setback.

The government order names the cleared villages as Nidumolu, Tarakathuru, Maddipatla, Kanchakoduru, Kaza, Avurupudi, Kalapatnam, Mukkollu, Pinagudurulanka, Guduru, Narikedalapalem, Rayavaram and Mallavolu, in Movva and Guduru mandals. Thirteen village names for 20 wells means some settlements take more than one hole. The original 35-well layout had split as 16 in Movva, 18 in Gudur and one in Pamarru; the approved list sits in Movva and Guduru.

THE KAZA WELL COUNT

The Engineer-in-Chief (Irrigation) in Vijayawada, the Chief Engineer of the Krishna Delta System, and Krishna District Collector D.K. Balaji are told to enforce the conditions. The oil ministry did not draw this map. The canal men did.

A Temporary NOC That Forbids Canal Water

The order is blunt about what it is not. It says the certificate has been issued only from the irrigation point of view and is purely temporary in nature. Cairn must still obtain all other permissions from the concerned departments before work starts. After examining the file, the government issued the NOC to Vedanta Limited (Cairn Oil and Gas Division), Mumbai, for drilling 20 wells, subject to those terms.

WHAT THE ORDER BARS

• Canal water: No drawing from the Bandar Canal, the Krishna Delta System network, drains, ponds, reservoirs, or any other surface source.
• The 500-metre belt: No drilling or construction within 500 metres of canals or drains.
• Effluent: Waste from the wells must not enter the canal network.
• Other files: Environment and remaining statutory clearances still have to be in hand before a spud.
• Duration: The NOC is temporary and can be read only as an irrigation no-objection, not as a licence to produce.

The draft environmental impact assessment said the project would need around 1,200 cubic metres of groundwater a day. With surface water closed, that load falls on bores in a delta where farmers already talk about saline wells. The 2020 application put the whole development at Rs 650 crore, with 10 hydrocarbon processing facilities, a peak of 30,000 barrels of oil a day and 30 million standard cubic feet of gas a day, phased over as long as 10 years. Those figures were written for 35 wells. Fifteen of those locations are now off the irrigation map.

Machilipatnam Still Drinks From Bandar Canal

The canal is not a backdrop. Machilipatnam takes drinking water from the Bandar Canal, which is also called the Machilipatnam Canal, and thousands of hectares of paddy and aquaculture sit on the same system. The block sits in the tail-end reach, where supply is already thin. That is why the environment ministry, years before this NOC, told the company to get a water-resources certificate and to show how it would protect the canal.

C. Ramakrishna, a farmer and lawyer in Kaza village, where one of the approved wells would come up, put the local arithmetic in one breath. The village is at the tail of the canal, irrigation water is already short, and the groundwater has turned saline.

Ours is a tail-end village of the Bandar Canal. As it is, we do not get enough water for irrigation. The groundwater, too, has become saline. How can the Water Resources Department give the nod without considering the impact on our lives?

C. Ramakrishna, farmer and lawyer, Kaza

He also said the public hearing on April 12, 2021, was hurried, with thin attendance. That hearing fell at the start of the second Covid wave. The Human Rights Forum later noted that the district’s April 8, 2021, list of Covid cases included a person from Kaza, and that appeals to postpone the hearing were ignored.

Collector Balaji said the state had issued the NOC after taking all aspects into account. He added that any violation would be dealt with as per law, and that public interest comes first. The certificate still leaves the canal as the live asset and the oil as the guest.

A Gas Discovery Sat Idle for 40 Years

Kaza is not a new wildcat. Company papers submitted to the environment ministry record that ONGC drilled three wells in 1985 on the Kaza structure. Two were dry. One found gas in the Raghavapuram sands. The field then sat. In 2018 the Union government put leftover ONGC and Oil India finds, plus relinquished discoveries, into Discovered Small Field auctions, sold as fast-track monetization of un-monetized small fields.

The DSF Round-II list carried Kaza as a 1985-86 gas find with in-place volumes, as of April 1, 2016, of 0.02 million metric tonnes of oil and condensate and 0.01 billion cubic metres of gas. Those are thimble numbers next to Cairn’s 30,000-barrel-a-day target. The target is a bet that the 114.93 square kilometre block holds more than the one old gas well, not a plan to empty that tiny booked volume.

FROM ONE ONG C HOLE TO A 20-WELL NOC

1. 1985: ONGC drills three exploratory wells on the Kaza structure; one finds gas in Raghavapuram sands.
2. August 9, 2018: Discovered Small Field Bid Round-II opens, covering 25 contract areas and 59 fields.
3. March 1, 2019: An empowered committee of secretaries awarded the Kaza contract area at 100 percent to Vedanta Limited; 23 of 25 areas went to 14 firms.
4. March 7, 2019: Contracts for the round are signed in New Delhi.
5. April 2, 2020: Terms of reference issued for the Kaza environmental appraisal (IA-J-11011/52/2020-IA-II(I)).
6. April 12, 2021: Public hearing held in Krishna district during the second Covid wave.
7. March 22, 2022: Human Rights Forum writes to the collector asking him to reject any water-resources NOC.
8. December 22, 2025: Water Resources Department issues a temporary irrigation NOC for 20 wells and refuses 15.

Almost seven years passed between the award and that irrigation certificate. The 2020 papers said execution would start only after all approvals, in phases beginning 2021. First oil that trade profiles once pencilled for 2025 did not arrive. Cairn, which says it supplies about a quarter of India’s domestic crude, still runs on Rajasthan, Ravva and Cambay. Kaza is a line in the acreage book.

Why Activists Call the Project Fracking

The government order, in the text that has been quoted, speaks of onshore oil and gas wells. It does not, in those extracts, license hydraulic fracturing by name. The Human Rights Forum has treated the project as shale work since 2021. In a March 22, 2022, letter, Y. Rajesh, P. Amareswara Rao and G. Rohith urged the collector to refuse the NOC, arguing that fracking would push toxic chemicals into the canal that Machilipatnam drinks from and into groundwater under tail-end fields.

On December 24, 2025, Rajesh and Rohith said the NOC itself carried no information on how those chemicals would affect canals and groundwater. They pointed to the draft EIA’s 1,200 cubic metres a day and said real frack jobs use far more, citing U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Duke University figures. The EPA median they quoted was about 1.5 million gallons (5.7 million litres) of water per well; Duke’s Permian numbers ran up to 42,500 cubic metres per well in 2016. Those are per-well stimulation volumes, not the company’s stated daily operating use, and they sit in a different league from 1,200 cubic metres a day for the whole site.

There is no information about the impact of chemicals on the irrigation canals and groundwater in the NoC.

Y. Rajesh and G. Rohith, Human Rights Forum, December 24, 2025 press note

WHERE THE TWO STORIES SPLIT

• Human Rights Forum: The project is shale oil and gas by hydraulic fracturing, a first of its kind here, and the water department is not equipped to judge that risk beside a drinking-water canal.
• Company and field files: Kaza is framed as a conventional onshore development of a 1985 gas find, with 35 (now 20) hydrocarbon wells and processing pads, not as a named shale play.
• The DSF licence: Round-II grants a single licence for conventional and unconventional hydrocarbons, so both readings can sit inside the same contract until a later approval says which tools will actually be used.

Hyderabad-based Scientists For People wrote to Collector Balaji after the NOC, asking whether any site-specific study of frack fluids, aquifers and canals had been used, how drought years were built into the groundwater math, whether the chemical list had been disclosed, and who would publish monitoring data in real time. Those questions were not answered in the irrigation order, because the order does not claim to answer them. Vedanta Oil and Gas’s public compliance pages still lists a draft EIA for Kaza among open environment files, not a granted-clearance compliance report of the kind posted for producing assets such as Ravva.

Assam’s Hazarigaon Field Is Already Flowing

Kaza was not Vedanta’s only DSF-II ticket. The same round gave it Hazarigaon in Assam. That field has already been on extended well testing, with a peak of 178,361 standard cubic metres of gas a day and an FY26 average near 102,000 standard cubic metres a day, and an estimated recovery around 2 million barrels of oil equivalent. One leftover ONGC crumb is selling gas. The Krishna crumb is still arguing with a canal.

Company-wide, Vedanta Oil and Gas averaged 77.7 thousand barrels of oil equivalent a day in the first quarter of this financial year, down 17% from 93.2 a year earlier, with Rajasthan still about 81% of the mix. Late-2026 spending talk from the oil business has pointed at polymer floods in Barmer, not at a Krishna spud. The Kaza file does not show up in that public argument, which is a fair read of where the barrels and the rupees actually are.

Even a full environment clearance would not move the irrigation lines. The 15 refused sites stay refused unless the water department rewrites the map. Surface water stays closed. The 500-metre belt stays. Groundwater would have to carry the 1,200 cubic metres a day the draft EIA named, in a tail-end tract that already reports saline wells. Consent to establish, consent to operate, and any Central Ground Water Authority nod would still sit in the pile. The December 22 certificate says so itself: it is temporary, and it is only an irrigation view.

Ramakrishna’s village is still at the end of the Bandar Canal. The 20 pins on the map are still more than 500 metres from the water that keeps Machilipatnam and the paddy alive. Until a rig actually turns, that distance is the whole decision.