The Hindu Business Line : Oil, gas exploration: Panel to consider winners on Nov 23

The Empowered Committee of Secretaries (ECOS) to consider winners of sixth round of New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) is expected to meet next Thursday (November 23). Since this is the committee that vets the bids, the Petroleum Ministry wants to ensure that the committee meets in full strength to decide on the successful bidders, official sources said.

Panel members

The committee includes secretaries of the Petroleum, Finance and Law Ministries. After the empowered committee's nod, the matter would be referred to the Law Ministry and subsequently the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) would be approached, sources told Business Line. The Petroleum Ministry is hopeful of completing the entire process by the end of this month. The Directorate-General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) has already sent its recommendations for award of blocks.

165 bids received

The NELP VI, which offered 55 exploration and production blocks, attracted 165 bids from global energy giants as well as the domestic majors. This is the highest ever received for 52 blocks under NELP VI. In all, 66 companies - 35 foreign and 31 Indian - bid either on their own or as consortia. While 39 blocks attracted multiple bids, 13 received single bids.

Besides, having received bids for 21 deepwater blocks, bids have also been received for all the 12 frontier on-land blocks.

Global majors

Global majors British Petroleum, British Gas, Italy's ENI, Petronas and the French multinational TOTAL, apart from domestic players, were among the bidders for oil and gas exploration rights in the country's largest ever licensing round covering an area of 3.52 lakh sq km.

Three blocks, however, did not receive any bids. While ONGC has submitted 45 bids adopting a consortium approach, GAIL (India) has submitted 28. Reliance Industries has submitted 21 bids (20 solo and one with Oil India).

Apprehensions

Even as the Petroleum Ministry is firming up its views, global majors have knocked at their doors pointing out false commitments made by the State-owned companies. There are apprehensions that a major chunk of the blocks may go to the State-owned companies such as ONGC and Oil India because of aggressive bidding.

According to industry sources, the PSU companies have made unrealistic work programme commitments. The global majors also feel that misleading financial packages have been offered by some of the bidders.

Official sources said, the evaluation system adopted under NELP VI is very transparent and it would be easy for the bidders to calculate how much marks would be allocated to each out of 98.