India's Reliance Industries Ltd aims to begin oil production in July-August from its D-6 block in the Krishna Godavari basin off India's east coast, a company source said on Tuesday.

We had the internal target to produce oil from June, but now we think it should begin sometime in July-August as we are yet to get a FPSO platform from Aker," the Reliance official, who did not wish to be identified, told Reuters.

Reliance had earlier said production from the block's MA-1 field was likely to begin in the second half of 2008.

The floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) platform the firm is waiting for, to be supplied by Aker Floating Production, has a capacity of 60,000 bpd and can store up to 1 million barrels of oil, the official said.



He said the firm had drilled 7-8 development wells, but to begin with Reliance would aim to produce sweet oil with an API density of 43 degrees from two or three wells to meet initial targeted output of 20,000 bpd.

"Sometime next year, we will raise the production to 40,000 bpd," he added.

Reliance has already begun inviting bids for sale of the crude, which officials say is similar to Marib Light.

Reliance aims to produce 240-350 million cubic feet of gas a day from the MA-1 field from the second half of the 2008/09 fiscal year, when gas production from two other fields in the block, D1 and D3, will also begin.

Reliance Industries is the operator of the D-6 block, with a 90 percent stake, while Canada's Niko Resources holds 10 percent.