Good response to round 1 of open-acreage bidding, says DGH

The response to international competitive bids for 55 oil and gas blocks under the Open Acreage Licensing Policy has been tremendous, according to the Director-General of Hydrocarbons, Atanu Chakraborty.

“While we too do not know directly as to who has participated in the bids so far and how many of them will make their bids, more than 120 companies have accessed the database of National Data Repository in Noida,” he said.

Speaking on the sidelines of a conference hosted here by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas to facilitate bids under the OALP, Chakraborty said, “The size and magnitude of the 55 blocks can be gauged from the fact that thus far while about 1.02 lakh sq km is under exploration, we are now offering nearly 60,000 sq km, about 60 per cent more.”

In the OALP Bid Round-I offered under the Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP), which was launched in January, 55 selected blocks in promising basins spread over about 59,282 sq.km, located across 11 States, have been offered.

Of these, five are located in the Krishna-Godavari basin with in place prognosticated resources to the tune of 9.5 mmtoe (million tonnes of oil equivalent).

The strong response received in the Expression of Interest stage of OALP Bid Round-I has reaffirmed the acceptance of the HELP, he said.

Under the HELP, the Government has sought to offer a revenue share model wherein the developer will get full pricing and marketing freedom as also freedom to carve out blocks. This has a single licence for all forms of hydrocarbons. On the progress made thus far, the DG said, “First oil from DSF-I round of bidders is likely to come out by 2020-21. If the initiatives on the ground are factored, and the potential in the sector, we may see more exciting bidding in the DSF-II, wherein 60 blocks will be offered soon.”

Referring to DSF -I, he said the blocks offered have potential to generate ₹46,440 crore during the lifetime of these fields, which includes ₹9,300 crore to Government of India through taxes and another ₹5,000 crore through royalty.

Discovered small fields

The first round of DSF saw significant interest from small and medium entrepreneurs, where contracts for 31 fields, which were from vintage discoveries. These contractors get the advantage of making use of the infrastructure created by some of the established players. This saw 13 new companies out of 23 contractors.

In fact, there has been significant progress in DSF-I fields and enthusiasm in the contractors is such that first oil may be earlier than 2020, he said.

There is no bar on bigger players taking part in DSF-II wherein 60 blocks, with estimated volume of 1.4 billion barrels of oil and oil equivalent, will be offered. Of these nearly half of them belong to the State-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and Oil India Ltd.

DN Misra, Union Joint Secretary, Exploration, said, “India currently produces about 37 million tonnes of crude oil as against demand of 110-120 MT. Our aim is to bring down the oil import by at least 10 per cent by 2022. The demand is going up by about 4-4.5 per cent per annum.”

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