New Delhi: India on Tuesday opened its largest oil and gas bid round, offering 25 blocks covering 1.91 lakh square kilometers mostly in the offshore area, as the government looks to boost domestic production to cut imports and help energy security, petroleum minister Hardeep Singh Puri said while launching the 10th bid round under the Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) at the India Energy Week (IEW) here.
OALP-X round will feature 25 blocks spread over 1,91,986 square kilometers in 13 sedimentary basins. 13 of the blocks are in the offshore area. In the previous nine rounds, a 3.78 lakh sq km area was offered. The last bid round, OALP-IX, was the largest before the current bid round. The OALP-IX bid round featured 28 blocks or areas spread over 1.36 lakh sq km were offered for finding and producing oil and gas.
OALP-IX in September attracted four bidders including state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd and private sector Vedanta Ltd, with most blocks getting just two bids, according to the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH). It also for the first time saw Reliance Industries Ltd-BP Plc combine bidding together with ONGC for one block in Gujarat offshore.
Reliance and its top partner BP had bid in just two of the past eight oil and gas bid rounds since 2017. Reliance-BP combine had bid and won the two blocks they had bid for in the previous rounds and in OALP-IX they teamed up with ONGC for the first time to bid for a shallow water block in the Gujarat-Saurashtra basin. The government is yet to award OALP-IX blocks to winners.
In OALP-IX, ONGC bid for 14 blocks alone and with partners such as state-owned Oil India Ltd (OIL) and Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) for four other blocks. After considering its bid with Reliance-BP, ONGC won all bids for 19 out of the 28 blocks on offer. Mining billionaire Anil Agarwal-owned Vedanta Ltd bid for all the 28 blocks on offer while Sun Petrochemicals Ltd bid for seven areas. Of the 28 blocks on offer, 4 blocks got 3 bids each while the rest had two bidders, one being Vedanta Ltd.
Blocks are awarded to firms offering the highest share of revenues generated from oil and gas produced from the blocks and the work programme they commit to. The 28 blocks offered in OALP-IX, including nine onshore blocks, eight shallow-water blocks and 11 ultra-deepwater blocks across eight sedimentary basins, covered an area of 136,596.45 sq km. In the previous eight OALP rounds, 144 exploration and production blocks comprising a total area of 242,055 sq km have been awarded.