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The Discovered Small Field (DSF) Bid Round 2016, which closed on Monday, sprang many surprises: it saw the entry of small and new players in the hydrocarbon exploration space, renewed interest in the Cauvery Basin, and reservations on the once-popular Krishna-Godavari Basin.
The Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) received 134 e-bids for 34 of the 46 contract areas on offer under DSF.
A total of 42 companies participated, of which five were public sector undertakings/subsidiaries, 32 domestic private companies and five foreign private companies, according to DGH.
Conspicuous by their absence were public sector giant ONGC and private sector major Reliance Industries Ltd. Among the successful bidders were Prize Petroleum Company, Megha Engineering & Infrastructure, Quippo Oil & Gas Infrastructure, Oilmax Energy, Nippon Power, Bharat Petro Resources, Essel Group Middle East, Sun Petrochemicals, and Worldwide Oilfield Machine Middle East.
Also successful were Cairn India, HOEC, GAIL (India), Indian Oil Corporation. The financial size of the bids will be known later.
“This is on expected lines,” an official said, adding that the bids for offshore fields would have been better “if the situation had been more conducive. The bid round took place in a challenging global market environment:oil and gas prices have been volatile and investments in the exploration and production sector have declined.”
Given these challenges, the response to the DSF bid round has been very favourable and exceeded the expectations of experts, said an industry tracker.
Of the 134 e-bids received, 120 were received for on-land areas and 14 for offshore. Despite the smaller contract areas on offer, the response from private companies was overwhelming; around 37 private sector players submitted e-bids, against 27 during the NELP-IX, the DGH statement said.
The DSFs were given to ONGC and Oil India prior to the licensing rounds on nomination basis. The two were unable to exploit these because of an unviable fiscal regime. But the DSF bid round envisages a revenue-sharing model, with pricing and marketing freedom to the contractors.
Under a unified licensing policy, contractors can explore any resource: oil, gas or shale.
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