The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on Wednesday approved the awarding of contracts in 31 contract areas of discovered small oil and gas fields earlier belonging to Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Limited (OIL). These contract areas include 44 fields, 28 inland and 16 offshore.
“These areas were discovered long back but these discoveries could not be monetised due to various reasons such as isolated locations, small size of reserves, high development costs, technological constraints, fiscal regime etc,” the government said in a statement.
The Cabinet had in September 2015 approved the auction of 69 of such small and marginal fields. Out of these, 67 discovered small fields were clubbed into 46 contract areas and put on offer through online international competitive bidding.
ADVERTISEMENT
According to the government, a total of 134 e-bids were received for 34 contract areas. A total of 47 companies submitted their bids, 43 of which were Indian companies and four were foreign firms.
“It is expected that in-place locked hydrocarbons volume of 40 million metric tonnes of oil and 22 billion cubic metres of gas will be monetised over a period of 15 years,” the statement added.