After 8 rounds of auction, India is moving towards Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP), where oil firms can choose the blocks they want to explore without waiting for the government to put them on offer.
"Our intention is to move to the OALP regime as soon as possible," Oil Minister Murli Deora said at the signing of the Production Sharing Contract for blocks awarded in the eighth round of auction.
"Under this policy, companies can suggest any block for offer at any time, without waiting for the announcement of the bids under New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP)," he said.
Companies can choose any area or block they wish to explore for oil and gas and approach the Government for award. The government will then put up an offer for that particular area.
"The block will be awarded to the party giving the best bid," Deora said.
The OALP is likely to be preceded by a last round of auction under NELP (NELP-IX) by the end of the year.
"It would be our endeavour to launch NELP-IX round in the third quarter of 2010," Deora said.
For the OALP to become operational, the establishment of the National Data Repository (NDR) was a pre-requisite.
"Directorate General of Hydrocarbon (DGH) is in the process of setting up the NDR, which will archive all E&P data, under one roof," Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Jitin Prasada said.
"Certain regulations regarding ownership of data. Sharing of information in the public domain etc will be required to be formulated while setting up the NDR. These issues are being looked into," he said.
DGH Director General S K Srivastava said that $1.34 billion investment has been committed in oil and gas hunt in the 36 blocks that were bid for in the NELP-VIII round that concluded last year.
"This was better than $1.2 billion investment committed in the previous round (NELP-VII)," he said.
State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and its partners will sign contracts for half of 34 oil and gas blocks awarded in NELP-VIII.
In all, Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) for 31 out of the 36 exploration areas that were bid for in the eighth edition of NELP will be signed tomorrow.
Of the 70 blocks offered in NELP-VIII, only 36 attracted bids from interested companies. Bids for two blocks were rejected and only 34 blocks were awarded. Of these 34 blocks, PSC for 31 were signed today and the rest would be done later.
Among the 24 deep water blocks that the government had put on offer, only 8 received bids, all of which were single bids.
ONGC and partners signed PSC for seven, while Cairn Energy Plc of UK inked contract for the other.
Of the 28 shallow water blocks on offer, 13 received bids.
BHP Billiton Petroleum won three, while ONGC got five of these as lead partner and one where Oil India Ltd (OIL) was the operator. Cairn Energy got a KG basin offshore block.
Rick Bott, Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer, Cairn India said, "Cairn only bid for two blocks and secured both of them."
"The award of the KG-OSN-2009/3 block, which was also the most contested offshore block, allows us to use our knowledge and experience gained from Ravva (oil and gas field off the east coast) and increases our presence in the prospective KG basin," he said.
"The award of the MB-DWN-2009/1 offshore block gives us the opportunity to test a frontier basin and will act as a focal point for further evaluation of the offshore west coast of India," he said.
"The award of both blocks underlines our confidence in India's hydrocarbon resources and our continued commitment to explore for new oil and gas resources in the country," he added.
As regards 18 onland blocks, bids were received for 15, four of which went to ONGC. Other winners include Jubilant, Oil India, NTPC and Esveegee Steel.
Sources said that the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs(CCEA) had in March rejected Deep Energy's offer for two onland blocks in view of "very low percentage share of profit to the Government."
ONGC signed PSC for seven deep-sea blocks -- five as the sole operator, one as a joint operator with OIL and one with the BG Group of UK as the operator.
Its other partners in deep-water blocks included Gujarat State Petroleum Corp (GSPC), GAIL India, NTPC and Andhra Pradesh Gas Infrastructure Corp. Shallow water blocks had Indian Oil Corp and Adani Welspun Exploration Ltd as additional partners.
In all, ONGC got 17 blocks -- in 14 as operator and three as non-operator. In the previous seven rounds too, ONGC had won almost half of the 203 blocks awarded.
