OALP Bid Round-1 receives good response, says DGH

The response to international competitive bidding for 55 oil and gas blocks under the Open Acreage Licensing Policy has been tremendous, according to the Director-General of Hydrocrabons. “While we, too, do not know directly as to who has participated in the bids so far and how many will make their bids, more than 120 companies have accessed the database of the National Data Repository in Noida,” he said.

“With barely two weeks to go for the cut-off date (April 3) for the bids, we may consider extending the date by about 15 days,” he said, speaking on the sidelines of a conference hosted here under the aegis of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, to facilitate bids under the OALP.

In the OALP Bid Round-I, offered under the Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP), which was launched in January 2018, 55 selected blocks in promising basins spread over about 59,282 sq km, located across 11 states, have been offered. Of these 55 blocks, five 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 HELP, he 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 are under exploration, we are now offering nearly 60,000 sq.km, about 60 per cent more,” he said.

Under 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.

DISCOVERED SMALL FIELDS (DSF)

Providing insights into the progress made thus far, the DG said the first oil from the DSF-I round of bidders is likely to come out by 2020-21. “If the initiatives on the ground are factored in, and the potential in the sector, we may see more exciting bidding in DSF-II, wherein 60 blocks will soon be offered,” he said.

Referring to DSF -I, he said the blocks offered have the potential to generate Rs 46,440 crore during the lifetime of these fields, which includes Rs 9,300 crore to the Government of India through taxes and another Rs 5,000 crore through royalty. The first round of DSF saw significant interest from small and medium entrepreneurs, where contracts for 31 fields 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.

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, would be offered. Nearly nearly half of these belong to the state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and Oil India Ltd. D.N. Misra, Joint Secretary, Exploration, said, “India currently produces about 37 million tonnes of crude oil as against demand for 110-120 mt. Our aim is to bring down oil imports by at least 10 per cent by 2022. Demand is rising by 4 to 4.5 per cent per annum.”