Domestic majors ONGC Limited and Vedanta Limited put in the highest number of bids in the first round of auctions under the Open Acreage License Policy (OALP) for oil blocks. It is to be noted that none of the foreign players expressed any interest in the blocks on offer. Vedanta has bid for all the 55 blocks on offer while ONGC has put in 37 bids. ONGC’s fellow Public Sector Undertaking, Oil India has put in 18 bids while GAIL (India) Limited put in six. IndianOil and Bharat Petroresources also bid for the blocks, taking the total number of public sector undertakings or their subsidiaries that participated to five. In an official statement, the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons said that 110 bids have been received for the 55 blocks on offer. Four Indian private companies, Vedanta, Selan Exploration, Hindustan Oil Exploration and Sun Petrochemicals have also bid for the blocks. There were 46 onland blocks and 9 offshore blocks on offer. For the onland blocks, 92 bids were received while 18 bids came for the offshore blocks. Blocks CB-ONHP-2017/11 and CB-ONHP-2017/12 have secured maximum bids (three bids each) during the round. Both these blocks are in the Cambay Basin. Two blocks have received a single bid, these are RJ-ONHP-2017/6 in Rajasthan and CB-ONHP-2017/1 in the Cambay Basin. Since Vedanta has bid for all the blocks on offer, the only bids here are theirs. These bids will now be evaluated on the basis of the minimum work program and revenue offered to the government. A DGH statement said, “The government endeavours to award these blocks by June 2018 to expedite the exploration activities to establish some part of the huge prognosticated conventional hydrocarbon resources of the order of 230 barrels of Oil and Oil Equivalent Gas in the ‘yet to find’ category in India.”

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