India Gets 110 Bids for 55 Blocks Under OALP
A total of 110 bids has been received for 55 oil and gas blocks that India offered under the recently concluded Open Acreage Licence Policy (OALP) with private firm Vedanta and state owned ONGC putting the highest and second highest bids, upstream regulator Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) said last week.
Vedanta has bid for all the 55 blocks, ONGC has bid for 37 blocks, another state owned major Oil India has put in 18 bids while Gail put in six bids. This bidders list is dominated by state owned firms and there were no foreign firms among the companies bidding for these blocks. Apart from Vedanta, other private firms bidding are Selan Exploration, Hindustan Oil Exploration and Sun Petrochemicals.
The 55 blocks are spread across India and include onshore, shallow water and deep water areas spread across 60,000 km2. On offer were 46 onshore blocks and 9 offshore blocks. For the onshore blocks, 92 bids were received while offshore blocks received 18 bids, DGH said. The blocks are expected to be awarded by June 2018.
The OALP was launched by Indian oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan in June 2017, saying that the aim was to accelerate exploration activities in the country since investors can express their interest in an area which they feel has prospective without waiting for formal bidding. The exploration and production sector has remained a main focus area for the Modi government, as it tries to move towards the target of reducing import dependence by 10% by 2022. The government has embarked on sectoral reforms such as gas price reform, streamlining the coalbed methane sector and holding Discovered Small Field rounds, to name a few.