Oil & Gas Blocks

In the ninth bid round, 28 blocks, with an area of approximately 136,000 square kilometres, are on offer for bidding

As many as 26 mainly offshore oil and gas blocks and 16 coal bed methane blocks have been notified for international bidding as India aims to quickly increase the area under exploration

India is offering 26 blocks or areas for finding and producing oil and gas in a mega offshore bid round, upstream regulator DGH said on Tuesday. Simultaneously, 16 areas for prospecting for coal-bed methane (CBM) are also being offered in a separate round. The "government announces the offer of 26 blocks covering an area of approximately 2.23 lakh square kilometers for exploration and development through international competitive bidding," the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) said without giving timelines for bidding. Out of the 26 blocks, 15 areas are in ultra-deepwater, 8 in shallow sea and 3 blocks are onland. The bid rounds are being held under the 2016 policy, called the Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP), which was promulgated on March 30, 2016. Since then, seven bid rounds of the Open Acreage Licensing Programme (OALP) have been concluded and 134 exploration and production blocks awarded. These blocks cover 2,07,691 square km of area across 19 ...

Award of these blocks is likely to be completed by the end of March 2022

The government has been hoping that opening up of more acreage for exploration will help boost India's oil and gas production

Centre expects minimum work commitment of $300-400 million immediately

Approvals for three processes that would need to be submitted within 30 days

Nippon Power, South Asia Consultancy, PFH (Poddar Family Holdings) Resources and Chennai-based Adbhoot Estates could be the first ones to start production from blocks awarded during DSF-1 auctions

The companies could be asked to commit to channeling the tax relief into boosting production from ageing fields, which would yield longer-term dividend for the government coffers

AWEL said the drilling of the current well in March 2021 has confirmed the presence of substantial quantities of gas and condensate in the Block

The CCEA, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the additional investment for the Shwe oil and gas project in Myanmar blocks

The government has awarded 94 blocks in four rounds for exploration in the last two-and-a-half years.

The government sees this as a milestone in the country's hydrocarbon sector, as investments so far were limited to only seven of the 26 sedimentary basins in the country

When the bidding window closed on November 21, ATNRL was barely three days old