Reliance Industries today bid for six oil and gas exploration blocks, while Cairn India submitted offers for two out of the 34 on offer in the 9th round of auction under the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP).

Reliance bid for two deep sea blocks in the Andaman Basin in the Bay of Bengal and four onshore blocks in Rajasthan and Cambay Basin, a source in the upstream oil regulator, the DGH, said here.

Cairn India, whose success in Rajasthan may have propelled Reliance to bid for two blocks in the State, has submitted offers for only two blocks — one onland and one offshore. Cairn has not bid for any two exploration blocks on offer in Rajasthan.

Bids for the 34 oil and gas blocks, which include eight in deepwater areas, seven in shallow water and 19 onshore properties, close today.

Reliance, which had not bid for any block in the previous NELP-VIII round in 2009, has shown interest in onland blocks in Rajasthan, apparently swayed by the huge oil finds by Cairn India.

The Mangala oilfield in Cairn India’s prolific RJ-ON-90/1 block in the Thar desert of Rajasthan is currently producing 125,000 barrels a day and the entire area where Cairn has made number of oil discoveries, has the potential to produce up to 300,000 bpd (15 million tonnes a year).

India had got an investment commitment of $1.1 billion in NELP-VIII and is expecting to better that.

Industry sources said Cairn, which is known to have a knack for making discoveries in areas often abandoned by energy giants, has little interest in NELP-IX as many of the blocks on offer are old and recycled (areas where some or the other company had previously done exploration but had abandoned them as they did not find any or very little hydrocarbons).

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