Oil companies will soon be able to choose blocks for exploration.
The government would decide in the next two-three weeks on how often the public sector oil marketing companies (OMCs) could revise petrol prices, Petroleum Secretary S Sundareshan said today.
Last week, the government ended price control on petrol as suggested by a committee headed by former Planning Commission member Kirit Parikh.
However, the government did not give any detail on the modality of the price revision — whether it would be done on a fortnightly or monthly basis. Issues that need to be addressed include whether companies will sell the product at uniform or different prices, what oil companies will pay to their own refineries while purchasing the product as well as what will be the price when there are cross-company purchases.
While the price of petrol was increased by Rs 3.50 a litre and diesel by Rs 2 a litre, LPG was made dearer by Rs 35 a cylinder and kerosene by Rs 3 a litre.
In spite of the increase affected last week, the OMCs — Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation — continue to incur underrecoveries of Rs 1.50 a litre on diesel, Rs 15.07 a litre on kerosene and Rs 226.90 on every LPG cylinder.
Open Acreage Licensing Policy
Oil companies will soon be able to choose the blocks to carry out exploration. The government’s intention was to move to the Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) regime as soon as possible, Union Petroleum Minister Murli Deora said today.
Deora was speaking at the production-sharing contract signing ceremony for the blocks awarded in the eighth round of the New Exploration Licensing Policy, or Nelp-VIII. “Under this policy (OALP), companies can suggest any block for offer at any time, without waiting for the regular bid rounds under Nelp. The blocks will be awarded to the party offering the best bid,” he said.
The Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH), the upstream oil sector regulator, is in the process of setting up a National Data Repository (NDR), which will archive all the exploration and production data, under one roof.
“Certain regulations regarding the ownership of data, sharing information in the public domain etc, will be required to be formulated while setting up NDR. These issues are being looked into,” said Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Jitin Prasada.
Of the 70 blocks offered under Nelp-VIII, only 36 attracted bids. The government finally awarded 34 blocks, half of which went to public-sector explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corporation. Of these 34 blocks, production-sharing contracts for 31 were signed and the remaining will be inked later. Under Nelp-VIII, various companies have committed an investment of $1.1 billion.
Deora said the government was working to launch Nelp-IX in the third quarter of this year. The ninth round may offer 30-40 oil and gas blocks.
