Foreign companies gave India’s oil and gas exploration business a miss, yet again. In the first round of auctions under the Open Acreage License Policy (OALP) for the hydrocarbon blocks, it was public sector giant ONGC and Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Ltd that put in the highest number of bids.

Vedanta has bid for all the 55 blocks on offer while ONGC has put in 37 bids. Oil India has put in 18 bids, while GAIL (India)put in 6.

IndianOil and Bharat Petroresources also bid for the blocks, taking the total number of PSUs or their subsidiaries that participated in the auction to 5.

In an official statement, the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons said 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 (3 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.

The bids will now be evaluated on the basis of the minimum work programme and revenue offered to the government.

A DGH statement said, “The government endeavours to award these blocks by June 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.”

comment COMMENT NOW