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Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and EXXON-Mobil may jointly bid for hydrocarbon blocks in the coming round of open acreage bid license rounds.
This has been made possible after the two signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for joint technical studies and cooperation in deep-water and other Petroleum Exploration Licence (PEL) blocks of ONGC.
An ONGC statement said that the blocks covered by the MoU are in the east and west coasts. The work under the MoU will be carried out in three phases. This will lead to a joint technical study for potential collaboration areas.
The MoU was signed on the sidelines of the third India Energy Forum by CERAWeek.
Chairman and Managing Director of ONGC, Shashi Shanker, said, “This partnership with EXXON-Mobil will be a step towards unlocking value in ONGC PEL offshore blocks, study open acreage areas.”
An ONGC official told BusinessLine that the two companies may consider bidding jointly for areas on offer in the open acreage bid round.
“The current MoU would be limited to exploratory blocks. We wanted to bring in an experienced partner to improve production profile from difficult discoveries (high-temperature, high pressure and deep-water and ultra deep-water). There would be sharing of resources and ONGC’s understanding of domestic geology will be leveraged with the new technologies that EXXON-Mobil would bring,” the top ONGC official told BusinessLine .
“There are no proposals to shed equity in ONGC’s blocks. We may bid jointly in some of the new blocks carved out under the open acreage license bid rounds,”, the official added.
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