The Hindu : Business : 55 oil exploration blocks offered for bidding

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Feb 24, 2006

Business

Business

55 oil exploration blocks offered for bidding

Special Correspondent

Ten coal bed methane blocks in six states to be awarded

— Photo: Sandeep Saxena

BIGGEST EXERCISE: Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister, Murli Deora (right), and Minister of State, Dinsha Patel, releasing the Data Package and Basin Information Docket after launching the NELP-IV and CBM-III website in New Delhi on Thursday.

NEW DELHI: In yet another bid to lure global oil majors to invest in oil and gas exploration in India, the Union Government has launched the largest ever bidding round offering 55 oil and gas blocks and ten coal bed methane (CBM) blocks. These include 24 in deep sea areas, six in shallow offshore and 25 in onland areas.

Launching NELP-VI here on Thursday, Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Murli Deora said the sixth round offered the highest ever acreage of 3.55 lakh sq. km as well as the highest number of blocks. He said a number of hydrocarbon discoveries made in the last three to four years had scaled up the geological prospectivity of Indian sedimentary basins in the mind of potential investors.

Three-fold rise

Besides, he said, in view of sustained high international crude prices, the interest of exploration and production companies in acquiring exploration acreages remained high. Addressing a press conference here, he said, after five rounds, the area under exploration had increased more than three times and reserve accretion had already been around 600 million tonnes and $5 billion of investment commitment had been received.

Petroleum Secretary M. S. Srinivasan said the evaluation criteria for the latest round had undergone a major change to discourage speculative bidding. More emphasis had been laid on the technical capability of the operator and the revenues the operator was willing to share with the Government. The previous rounds laid more emphasis on work programme, which led to highly exaggerated bidding, he said.

Besides, he said, the Government would now take its share of oil and gas, termed profit oil or gas, not annually but once in five years.

Mr. Deora said the 25 onland blocks fell in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Mizoram, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. Off the 24 deepsea blocks, 20 were off the east coast, three off the west and one lies in Andaman offshore. Four of the shallow water blocks were in the western offshore and the remaining two off the east coast. The ten CBM blocks were situated in Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and West Bengal. Bidding opens on February 28 and closes on September 15.

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