India Awards Five More Oil, Gas Blocks

India’s Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) has approved award of five more oil and gas blocks that were offered in the ninth round of bidding under New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP), Press Trust of India reported.

The government had offered 34 areas for exploration and production of oil and gas in NELP-IX in 2010 and bids for 33 were received at the close of bidding on March 28 last year. Of these, CCEA in March awarded 16 blocks to firms like ONGC while bids for 10 blocks were rejected due to bidders offering lesser than expected profit petroleum.

Mumbai basin deepsea block MB-DWN-2010/1 was awarded to consortium of UK's BG Exploration & Production Ltd and BHP Billiton Petroleum (International Exploration) Pty Ltd of Australia. Shallow water block MB-OSN-2010/2 in the same basin is due to be awarded to a consortium of OIL, Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) and Bharat Petro Resources Ltd, who were the sole bidders.

The Assam-Arakam basin onshore block AA ONN-2010/1 went to a consortium of Prize Petroleum and ABG Energy, PTI said.

In the previous eight rounds of NELP, 235 blocks were awarded. The 34 exploration blocks offered in NELP-IX included eight deepwater blocks, seven shallow water blocks, 11 on-land blocks, and 8 Type-S (or small) on-land blocks.