Gail will partner Brazil's Petrobras to bid for oil and gas blocks on offer in the 6th round of New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP)."The two companies signed a co-operation and confidentiality agreement last week during the visit of the Gail team to Brazil," according to an official release issued today. Gail said Petrobras had also shown keen interest in partnering the company for various exploration projects including blocks in Iran such as Block 12.Currently, Gail's total exploration acreage is 91,350 sq.km. with the participating interest in 16 exploration blocks. Of these, 7 are on-land blocks and 9 are offshore blocks. The various consortium partners of the company in the 16 blocks are ONGC, GSPC, Gazprom, OIL, IOC, Hardy Exploration and Production, Enpro Finance, ENI India, Jubiliant, GGR Canada, Daewoo, OVL, Korea Gas, Oilex, Videocon, BPCL and HPCL. Gail's participating interests in these blocks varies from 10 to 80 %.The government has offered 55 oil and gas blocks for bidding in NELP-VI. Off these, 24 are in deep sea, 6 in shallow offshore and 25 onlands. Bids for NELP-VI close on September 15.
