The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG) has offered 10 blocks under the eight round of Open Acreage Licensing Programme (OLAP) for International Competitive. The last date of submitting bids is September 6.

The Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP) was promulgated on March 30, 2016. Since then seven rounds of OALP have already been concluded and 134 Exploration and Production (E&P) blocks awarded comprising 2,07,691 sq km. of area spread across 19 sedimentary basins, MoPNG said in a statement.

“Successful award of Round-VIII Blocks would add a further 36,316 sq km of exploration acreage and the cumulative exploration acreage under OALP regime will be increased to 2,44,007 sq km,” it added.

The 10 blocks under present bid round are spread across 9 Sedimentary Basins and include two On-land blocks, four shallow Water blocks, two Deep Water Blocks and two Ultra-Deep Water blocks. It is expected that OALP Round VIII would generate an immediate exploration work commitment of around $600-700 million, MoPNG noted.

The Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP), which adopts the Revenue Sharing Contract model, is a giant step towards improving the ‘Ease of Doing Business’ in the the Exploration and Production (E&P) sector.

It comes with attractive and liberal terms like reduced royalty rates, no Oil cess, no revenue share bidding for blocks in Category-II and III Basins, marketing and pricing freedom, round the year bidding, freedom to investors for carving out blocks of their interest, a single license to cover both conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon resources, exploration permission during the entire contract period, and an easy, transparent and swift bidding and awarding process.

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