Petronas eyes Indian oil and gas reserves

Malaysia's leading oil company Petronas has evinced keen interest in participating in India's oil and gas exploration. "Petronas has expressed interest.

They have purchased data for some areas. However, the final picture on the number of bidders will emerge after may 31 this year, when offers will close," petroleum and gas officials said today while kicking off a two-day roadshow to promote awareness about oil and gas prospects in India.

The road show is part of the Indian government's recent initiative to launch the fifth New Exploration Licencing Policy (Nelp) to give a boost to investment in the country's oil and gas sector.

"We need new ideas to get more oil and gas. We need your ideas as well as your investment," S C Tripathi, secretary, Ministry of Petroleum, told a large gathering of executives from oil companies and related fields here.

India is offering 20 oil blocks (both offshore and onland) to companies interested in bidding. Before coming to Kuala Lumpur, road shows were held in London, Houston, Calgary, Dubai, Amsterdam, Moscow and perth.

"The Indian story is getting better. People have started taking a closer look at India today especially the oil and gas exploration area," Tripathi said referring to the overall positive response the road shows had received.

Noting that today serious interest was being shown by large oil companies like Shell, BP, Petronas, Tripathi attributed it to the large gas deposits found in India in recent years, the prominence of the Indian economy and also to the vastly improved data collection and presentation.

"Licenses would be awarded through international competitve bidding under an internationally competitive fiscal regime," Sunjoy Joshi, joint secretary, Ministry of Petroleum said.

The 20 blocks on offer include 12 onland blocks, six deepwater blocks and two shallow water blocks. The government launched the fifth round of Nelp in the backdrop of huge oil and gas discoveries made by Reliance Industries and Niko Resources in Krishna Godavari deepwater, by Cairn Energy in Barmer and by Reliance in northeast coast offshore.

The officials assured the Malaysian oil companies that if there was sufficient interest shown by this country, India could set up a data centre here.

Only 18 per cent of the total of 3.14 million sq km has been extensively explored in India. Eighty two per cent of the sedimentary areas are still unexplored. Referring to the Indo-Iran gas pipeline project, Tripathi said India was looking at four to five possibilities and Iran was one of them.

He cited two main reasons for this - proximity to India and Iran's reserves which were the second largest in the world.

Pakistan had shown a lot of intersst in getting the pipeline project realised, he said. Tripathi felt that it could be cheaper by at least $1 per billion btu to buy from Iran comparing the prices vis a vis LNG. New Delhi could also look at CNG from Myanmar too following a feasibility study.