The government has announced the launch of fifth round of bidding for hydrocarbon exploration under the open acreage licensing policy (OALP), offering 11 blocks in eight sedimentary basins covering an area of 19,800 square kilometres. This round is expected to generate immediate exploration work commitment of about $400-450 million.
The 11 blocks under OALP Round-V include eight onland blocks, two shallow water blocks and one ultra deep water block.
Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan held the exploration and production (E&P) stakeholders meeting in New Delhi on Tuesday with the aim of production maximisation and revenue optimisation. He stressed on the need to move forward towards securing energy requirements of the country.
“Supportive policies and simplified business processes have established India as a happening energy investment destination. We are committed towards making the sector more process driven, transparent & further simplifying the procedures with main objective of production maximisation,” he tweeted after the meeting.
The Petroleum Ministry has accelerated exploration through OALP and added 1.40 lakh sq kms acreage, increasing the total acreage for E&P to 2.40 lakh sq kms. The government has also set up a dispute resolution mechanism to resolve issues in time-bound manner without going for arbitration.
The government has implemented several reforms to make the India’s E&P sector more attractive and business-friendly such as single window clearance to expedite grant of approvals, shifting focus from revenue sharing to production maximisation and providing marketing and pricing freedom for gas.
The bid submission for the fifth round will start on January 14, 2020 and end on March 18, 2020.
ONGC was awarded all the seven block under the fourth round of OALP bids on January 2, 2020.
