Cabinet awards oil blocks

The Cabinet cleared Oil and Natural Gas Corporation's bid for 15 of the 21 oil and gas exploration blocks offered for bidding under the fourth round of the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP-IV).

The other heavyweight in the fray, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) that had joined hands with Hardy Oil of the UK to bid for eight of the 12 deep-water blocks on offer, had bagged only one block, NEC-DWN-2002/1, officials said.

Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Ram Naik was expected to make a statement in Parliament tomorrow on the issue, they said. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs also approved the modified market access initiative scheme to promote exports, with a total outlay of Rs 552 crore during the Tenth Five-Year Plan.

It has expanded the scope of the scheme to include registration and testing charges for pharmaceutical, bio-technology and engineering products. An empowered committee, under the commerce secretary, will sanction assistance under the scheme to different export promotion councils.

The CCEA, however, deferred a decision on reducing the threshold for mega power projects from 1,000 Mega Watt to 250 Mw. It also deferred a decision on doing away with the 10 per cent purchase price preference given to public sector undertakings at present, especially in the power sector.

It also did not take a decision on statutory minimum prices for sugar, minimum support price for rabi crops and introducing graded compounding fees for indirect tax offences.

The CCEA approved the setting up of a Rs 1,672.98 crore transmission system to evacuate power from National Thermal Power Corporation's Sipat unit in Chhattisgarh. The power from the 1,980 Mw project will be used by the western region.

Under NELP IV, the government in May this year had invited bids for 24 oil and gas exploration blocks --11 on land, 12 deep-water and one shallow-water. The 11 on land blocks are located in Assam, Bihar, Manipur, Nagaland, Rajasthan, Tripura (one each), Tamil Nadu (2) and Gujarat (3).

The 12 deep-water blocks are located on both the east coast (8 blocks) and on the west coast (4 blocks). One shallow-water blocks is located on the east coast. The closing date for the bidding was September 30.

The bids had been evaluated by the petroleum ministry and its recommendations were forwarded to the empowered committee of secretaries before being presented to CCEA for final approval.

State-owned Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), which had bid for exploration blocks for the first time and had teamed up with ONGC, was successful in a Cauvery on-land block and deep-water blocks in the Krishna-Godavari basin and Mahanadi basin.

The other public sector oil marketing and refining company, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, in consortium with ONGC, had bagged two Kerala-Konkan deepwater blocks, sources said.